Where you’re supposed to be
Dear friend —
How do you know you’re where you’re supposed to be? Sometimes, a book tells you. Last month, I moved to Tucson, and the first new book I happened to start on my Kindle began with these two words: “In Tucson.” Then it went on:
“In Tucson, I rode my bike until the heat turned into something else, something I could make my own….”
The book: Chelsea Hodson’s book of personal essays, Tonight I’m Someone Else. I’d picked it up without knowing what it was about — someone had recommended it to me in passing — but after that sentence I urgently looked Chelsea up on the internet. Apparently Chelsea had lived in Tucson during her listless college years — sometime after which she moved to L.A. as a PEN America Emerging Voices fellow. A few years after that, I served on the selection committee for that very fellowship program — sometime after which I moved to Tucson.
Serendipities happen all the time, and, depending on our belief systems, we call them by various names — a coincidence, a sign, a manifestation. I have a Facebook friend who considers herself a great manifester. When, over smoothies, I asked for evidence of her powers, she told me about a time she’d really wanted a blue hoodie — then found the perfect one on sale at a store in Santa Monica.
My thought was: Isn’t that just called shopping?
Which is to say — I’m of the opinion that manifestations or serendipities or signs are simply stimuli that were always there, but suddenly begin to stand out due to a change in focus. Buy a dark silver Honda, and you’ll start noticing there are quite a few dark silver Hondas on the road. Invent a character called Tyler for your novel, and real-life Tylers will come out of the woodwork. Call men callous, and you’ll meet a string of callous men. Smile recklessly, and the world will start grinning right back for no reason at all.
So I realize if I’d opened Chelsea’s book after riding a bike, I’d have focused on the word bike. If’ I’d been sweating, the word heat. If I’d been feeling bereft, the phrase “something I could make my own….”
Still, regardless of what I read, I often get the feeling the book exists just for me. That’s the magic of reading — that all this time, the book has been waiting, knowing I’ll pick it up at just the right time —
On that point: I’ve discovered that in Tucson, there are free books waiting for me literally every few blocks. Little Free Libraries — those birdhouse-like boxes that let you take and return books at will — are very, very popular here. So far, I’ve hit 15 of them, all in walking distance.
These tiny libraries have already expanded my reading palate. One of the first books I picked up was Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder, which gave me this message:
“Never be so focused on what you’re looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.”
I picked up Anthony Marra’s The Tsar of Love and Techno next, and it told me this:
“You think you narrate your own story, but you’re only the blank page.”
These are great sentences to read when you’ve just gotten rid of all your stuff and become a nomad. They remind me not to plan too much, and not to look too hard. The things I need, the things I want but don’t yet even know I want — are already coming my way.
My summer reading list will be dictated by chance encounters at the little free libraries around me. And my nomad life too will be shaped by unexpected serendipities. I don’t know how I’ll like the places I go or what will happen there, but I’ll hold these lines from my current read — Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights — in my heart:
“I realized that — in spite of all the risks involved — a thing in motion will always be better than a thing at rest; that change will always be a nobler thing than permanence; that that which is static will degenerate and decay, turn to ash, while that which is in motion is able to last for all eternity.”
What are you reading this summer?
Love,
Siel
P.S. Three links you might enjoy:
Here’s a map of Little Free Libraries, searchable by zip code. Note: Not all libraries are listed on the map.
Literary Death March has gone virtual — and it’s free!
The New York Times Magazine’s all-fiction issue is out!
P.P.S. In addition to the books already mentioned, I’ve read Emmanuel Carrere’s 97,196 Words and Nigel Warburton’s A Little History of Philosophy since I got to Tucson.