![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
parasitegirlNovember 22nd, 2011
My parents are readers. This was not enough to keep them together, they divorced when I was three, but it did provide me two separate but extensive book collections to grow up in. They both continue to send me books they have read. I’m rarely surprised but usually pleased with what they include in care packages. My mother and I are close enough in taste that she’s learned to ask before sending, lest I’ve already read what she intended to mail.
And when we need to escape, when we need to burrow into a book that will allow time to fall away but not tax us too much, the three of us turn to mysteries. There is nothing like a good procedural. The unknown falls into patterns. There is also comfort in knowing that even though the case has been solved that the eccentric detective/ private eye/ lawyer/ old lady/ forensic scientist you’ve grown comfortable with will return in the next volume.
We book readers are not alone in our love with the crime procedural, television is as smitten. The bodies will continue but so will the battle for justice. The world is continually dark and trying to reach the light. Patterns will be exposed and evidence will bring us closer to the truth. Our biases will be revealed. Our flaws will compromise the outcome. The seemingly insignificant moments will be unwound and found to be the clue we needed all along. We will have our answers, but finding them has changed us…but never enough that we’ll be unrecognizable next week.
I also start with the body. What can I say? It provides me with structure. What I have written in the past, they photos I have taken, and those who can confirm my story are not always nearby, but I’m always within reach.
I lean back, pulling my shoulder blade together, and I feel the evidence of last night. I used a heavier weight. I celebrated getting my lung capacity back after a week of asthma by pushing through a workout that had been thwarting me. I went deeper into the movements, renting my muscles on a microscopic level. This morning, at my desk, I am quietly aware of my efforts but I’m not limited by the pain or restricted motion that signals having overdone it.
Under my purple sweater, my arms look awesome.
I wrote when I was in motion. Words grounded me when I was in flight. I typed on subways, bullet trains, and airplanes. I bought notebooks in case keyboard access was restricted.
In the nowhere of my host’s home in Taiwan I suddenly found myself in one place. My four day vacation stretched to two weeks. I had no responsibility to be anywhere. The only thing that was being asked of me was that I stay safe.
I hand ground coffee and drank it slowly. I checked mail and the news. I wrote. On most days I walked a half hour to the grocery store. I cooked for us both in the evening. We ate.
After a few days I went online and illegally downloaded some bellydance/yoga practices, justifying it with the fact that these were items I already bought and owned. I also legally purchased a few downloadable titles from an online bellydance forum.
I made myself a workout space. Each afternoon I dragged the wicker vanity from my room to the room at the end of the hall so I could have a mirror. I set up my laptop next to it on a chair. I rolled out a bamboo mat in place of a yoga mat knowing that the traction it provided would make up for the bruises. And there, in room with cracked walls and an ornate family shrine that had been abandoned by the pervious owners, I would work out for one or two hours a day.
I sent out a black and white self-portrait of this. You could clearly see the cracks in the wall behind the vanity and laptop. There I was in the mirror, my hair pulled back, in my sports bra and yoga pants after a work-out. I stood, framed by entropy, myself.
My parents are readers. This was not enough to keep them together, they divorced when I was three, but it did provide me two separate but extensive book collections to grow up in. They both continue to send me books they have read. I’m rarely surprised but usually pleased with what they include in care packages. My mother and I are close enough in taste that she’s learned to ask before sending, lest I’ve already read what she intended to mail.
And when we need to escape, when we need to burrow into a book that will allow time to fall away but not tax us too much, the three of us turn to mysteries. There is nothing like a good procedural. The unknown falls into patterns. There is also comfort in knowing that even though the case has been solved that the eccentric detective/ private eye/ lawyer/ old lady/ forensic scientist you’ve grown comfortable with will return in the next volume.
We book readers are not alone in our love with the crime procedural, television is as smitten. The bodies will continue but so will the battle for justice. The world is continually dark and trying to reach the light. Patterns will be exposed and evidence will bring us closer to the truth. Our biases will be revealed. Our flaws will compromise the outcome. The seemingly insignificant moments will be unwound and found to be the clue we needed all along. We will have our answers, but finding them has changed us…but never enough that we’ll be unrecognizable next week.
I also start with the body. What can I say? It provides me with structure. What I have written in the past, they photos I have taken, and those who can confirm my story are not always nearby, but I’m always within reach.
I lean back, pulling my shoulder blade together, and I feel the evidence of last night. I used a heavier weight. I celebrated getting my lung capacity back after a week of asthma by pushing through a workout that had been thwarting me. I went deeper into the movements, renting my muscles on a microscopic level. This morning, at my desk, I am quietly aware of my efforts but I’m not limited by the pain or restricted motion that signals having overdone it.
Under my purple sweater, my arms look awesome.
I wrote when I was in motion. Words grounded me when I was in flight. I typed on subways, bullet trains, and airplanes. I bought notebooks in case keyboard access was restricted.
In the nowhere of my host’s home in Taiwan I suddenly found myself in one place. My four day vacation stretched to two weeks. I had no responsibility to be anywhere. The only thing that was being asked of me was that I stay safe.
I hand ground coffee and drank it slowly. I checked mail and the news. I wrote. On most days I walked a half hour to the grocery store. I cooked for us both in the evening. We ate.
After a few days I went online and illegally downloaded some bellydance/yoga practices, justifying it with the fact that these were items I already bought and owned. I also legally purchased a few downloadable titles from an online bellydance forum.
I made myself a workout space. Each afternoon I dragged the wicker vanity from my room to the room at the end of the hall so I could have a mirror. I set up my laptop next to it on a chair. I rolled out a bamboo mat in place of a yoga mat knowing that the traction it provided would make up for the bruises. And there, in room with cracked walls and an ornate family shrine that had been abandoned by the pervious owners, I would work out for one or two hours a day.
I sent out a black and white self-portrait of this. You could clearly see the cracks in the wall behind the vanity and laptop. There I was in the mirror, my hair pulled back, in my sports bra and yoga pants after a work-out. I stood, framed by entropy, myself.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-11-22 04:14 pm (UTC)And i too am a mystery lover--books and movies.
Hugs from a beautiful beach town on the California coast----quiet walks and birdwatching. Back to teaching my 2 classes tonight.