Answer #26 - Because Neruda is Shiny

The books
pile up.  Fearful
pages that discourage
lion hunters.
Geographies
in four hundred volumes.
In the first ones,
there were full moons,
jasmine from the islands;
the last one
are only solitudes:
snow kingdoms,
stirrings of reindeer.  -  Pablo Neruda

They're calling me.  The books on the wooden end table from my mother that sits next to my bed like a camel.  The lamp and shade like a long neck and head, two stacked lumps of books sent or given by friends that I should read.  That I will read.

Someday soon.  I've made it a resolution this year to read more and talk less, but, as you're currently experiencing, I'm still talking.

Still - the books wait.  In two piles - The Earth is Enough by Harry Middleton, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche, The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins, The Importance of Being Iceland - Travel Essays in Art by Eileen Myles, Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon, Michael Keller's graphic adaptation of Darwin's Origin (this one is absolutely bitchin.  Origin in comic book form?  Holy Galapagos, Fitzroy!) Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett and a dog-eared and taped-up copy of The National Audubon Society's Pocket Guide to Constellations (because I almost always have my head in the clouds).

With the exception of Pratchett and Audubon, these books weren't purchased by me, aren't reflections of my browsings of the NY Times Book Review, nor reflect my finger on the pulse of current literary buzz.  These books are reflections of the minds and choices of my friends, the people I love.  It's a great show of confidence on their parts, sending these love letters to me.  They're assuming much.  Starting with the assumption that my attention span exceeds that of my dog's.  And that's a big one.

So why the short attention span?

I spend so much time working, making phone calls, answering emails, being distracted by shiny objects - that I neglect the books, quite literally forget that I should stop and read.  Sometimes forget where and who I am.  So the books collect dust and bottles of lotion, bits of jewelry and kleenex while I wander the mirrored halls of my funhouse brain.  In those fleeting minutes when I'm back with the world, I walk by the bedroom, hear the murmuring in the pages (a murmuring that Terry Pratchett depicts better than anyone ever will) and, well, even as I write, they're calling me.

I can imagine the friend who gave me each book running down a path in a snowy wood, calling back to me, 'Come on! You've gotta see this... it's amazing...'

And now I have to go, because everyone knows that a dog's gotta chase a running thing.

First stop, Iceland.