Ever since I can remember, books have always been my frequent companions. As a kid, books would tuck me in bed late at night and I would devour their pages until I couldn’t hold my eyes open…many times I would wake up in the middle of the night with a book on my chest having fallen asleep while trying to finish a chapter. As a matter of fact, this is one ritual I’ve never ceased, even when camping and I have to share the light with any and every moth in a three-mile radius.
Even now, I always have a book on hand in case I have a few spare minutes and my hands are tired from needlework. Some people escape in books and forget about the rest of the beat of the world, but I always have seen books as a way to obtain closer intimacy with others. By understanding the words of someone else you’re subtly asked to think as someone else, and it forever allows for new points of understanding and questioning and deepens our compassion for when we close the book and come back to the so-called “real world.”
When I was little I figured I would either work with animals or write, falling in love early with the life of
James Herriot. As I got older and the sciences turned out to be my academic nemesis, I wondered what I was to do.
Decades later, I’m still not entirely sure…having at one time or another called myself a sign painter, barista, consultant, secretary, knitter for hire, feeder of sheep, housesitter, bookseller, cake deliverer….and that’s just the highly abridged list. I guess I never really stopped asking questions once I picked my nose out of a book after all.
As I look at turning 33 in two months, I wonder what’s to become of us seekers and searchers and travelers in this world of taxes and health insurance and mortgages. Maybe we’re a dying breed, maybe we just need to unionize, maybe we’re meant to ask and seek and create each day anew looking for others who see the world the same. I’m sure you know the type, or maybe you even
are the type….if you are, do
let me know what you think the best course of action for us searchers is…
Above is the cover of my first book,
Knitting for Good!, to be out later on this year. Many thanks to the good people at
Shambhala, who helped edit and tease out the words when I was too close to them. Using knitting as both an example and as a metaphor, the book was written to help people engage with their creativity in different and new ways by using their creative interests to better themselves, their community and this world.
It is my greatest hope that some night, maybe some night soon, someone reads my own words and uses them to help better figure out how to navigate their days or rethink their own sense of compassion or just read them and understand. Whether at bedtime, or by flashlight in the wilderness, or for a few minutes on the bus, or sitting with a cup of tea, it is my greatest hope that you, too, will find wisdom in books… and then use them as a guide instead of escape.
Currently on my bedside table (there is always a massive stack which I pull from depending…):
Kiss and Tell
Creating a Life Worth Living
Regarding the Pain of Others
Mindfulness in Plain English
The Corporate Rebel’s Productivity Guide
Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper- Case Closed
Here’s to happy reading, and hoping my cat doesn’t decide to knock my tower of books over on me as I sleep.