Tell me about your books and I’ll tell you about mine…

Stephen King once said that “books are a uniquely portable magic.” And doesn’t this library look like a magical scene straight out of Harry Potter?

It’s actually the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris. Can you imagine?

The next time I am in Paris, I will buy books there.

Thanks to the Goodreads Reading Challenge, I’m allowed to buy books again because I’m (finally) reading books again!

What I just read…
The Outermost House by Henry Beston

What I’m reading now…
Life Is Full of Sweet Spots by Mary O’Connor
The Book of Life: Daily Meditations by Jiddu Krishnamurti

What’s I’m looking forward to reading next…
Convergence by Judith Bruder
The House on Nauset Marsh by Wyman Richardson.

What I MUST get my hands on…
Inferno by Dan Brown

After that, I’m thinking about…
The Book of Flying by Keith Miller
A Sabbath Life: One Woman’s Search for Wholeness by Kathleen Hirsch
The Art of Travel by Alain De Botton
A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children by Caroline Kennedy

Love at first sight at the Book Barn in Niantic, CT. (Him or me?)

In a recent blog post, my friend Judith wrote: “Why so many books on booklovers’ shelves? I have a theory. I am convinced that, in the middle of the night, books hop down off their shelves and mate, which is why people always find their shelves overflowing all the while swearing, truly, I did NOT buy all of these!”

It MUST be true!

Thank goodness we have these examples for how we can shelve our obsessions: click here.

“So, please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookcase on the wall.” ― Roald Dahl

• • •

©2013, Jen Payne

Leaving Everywhereness

There’s a commercial on television for Facebook’s new mobile feature that shows a woman visiting a museum. Her cell phone beeps and the photo she receives replaces the framed Birth of Venus in front of her. It beeps again, and the statue she walks by turns into a replica of her friend. When it beeps a third time, she gets an instant message, which a museum guard repeats to her, “Us girls are going dancing tonight, U in?”

The message is the same as the commercial showing a family on a camping trip zipped up inside their tent staring at their iPad — why be present when you can be somewhere else?

My recent series of posts was titled “Great Cape Escape,” but did I really escape? It didn’t matter that the hotel’s wi-fi only worked if I was sitting with my laptop on the bathroom floor, my iPhone with its “everywhereness” allowed me instant access to everything and everyone — 200 miles from home, 5 miles down the beach or 3 miles out into the ocean.

It turns out, being present — being here, in this moment — takes even more effort now than it did when Buddha suggested we “concentrate the mind on the present moment.”

Our present moment now includes everyone else’s present moments that are broadcast on Facebook and emails and blogs and websites and Twitter tweets.

Our present moment now includes these multifunctional devices that serve as our phone, camera, clock, message machine, compass, book, entertainment console, umbilical cord. Like Medusa, it’s hard to look away.

It takes mindfulness to disconnect from that everywhereness, that everythingness — you know as well as I do how seductive it is. But as we move forward, as our technology feeds our technology, we have to learn to set boundaries.

They like to tell say you have a right to everywhereness. But you also have a right to shut it off, to look up from the tiny little screens and see the big picture — right now, this moment. Go!

Sensory Memory

The cracker
in cellophane
from the diner
tastes like age eleven,
and I think of her—
“Grammy” —
sitting next to me
dunking Saltines into
Salada tea with
milk and sugar.
I hear the chirp
of her hearing aid,
smell Vicks
and Vasoline,
feel the softness
of her cheek
against my lips.

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©2013, Jen Payne

Conversations and Confections

The blogosphere is a pretty amazing place. Consider this: on a regular basis, I open up WordPress, put down in words and pictures a conversation that is on my mind, and hit PUBLISH. Those very steps connect me instantaneously to all of you—my “Followers” and the greater blogging community.

Like that! I hit PUBLISH, and someone in Slovakia is reading about my trip to Cape Cod, and someone in Mongolia is taking a walk with me in the woods of Connecticut!

Like that! We are communicating—you and I and people from at least 100 other countries! Reading, commenting, sharing in the thoughts and ideas we exchange here.

Like that! I am sitting in an Italian pastry shop in Northampton, Massachusetts feasting on decadent, sugary treats with a fellow blogger I feel like I’ve known forever.

Judith and I meet and immediately pick up our conversation where we left off yesterday, although we haven’t seen or spoken with each other since last July. We do this easily, because our blogs are part of our conversation — almost daily.

An assortment of pastries sits on the table, alongside an assortment of topics: technology, writing, books, spirituality, photography, food. It’s no surprise — but a great surprise, at the same time — that she and I find common threads in our thoughts, our interests, and what we want to talk about today. By their very nature, blogs attract like-minded souls, and our tête-à-tête bears witness to that fact.

We immediately come to the agreement that the word “conversation” best fits this synergy that happens between bloggers, and joyfully continue with ours — animated and face-to-face.

Please be sure to visit Judith’s blogs:
• A View from the Woods
• Touch 2 Touch

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©2013, Jen Payne

May Memory

I never forget

that night

first touch

your kiss

a dream

in May
when lilacs
bloom.

• • •

Photo & Words ©2013, Jen Payne

Dream 051113

Elegant robe
softly falls
from shoulders
on a balcony
by ruddy rows
of new-plowed crops.
Raindrops
dance down
window panes,
as Sparrow
sips nectar
from the hollow
above her collarbone.
She has no voice
when he calls for her
from the other side
of dreams.

Poem and digital collage by Jen Payne. Image of nude borrowed from Back of a Nude, by William Merritt Chase, 1888.

Great Cape Escape II: Grand Finale

In a grand finale finish to the Great Cape Escape, we found ourselves at Race Point Beach for a dramatic sunset. As we came up over the dunes to the expanse of beach, just offshore a whale breached against the violet sky. It was fleeting and magical. A perfect ending.

• • •

Read More
GREAT CAPE ESCAPE II
• Great Cape Escape 2013
• A Journal of Days
• Elemental Things
• Sand and Water
• Words Like Abundance
• Blessed Places
• Where Everybody Knows Your Name
• Visions of Design
• Hope for Whales

PHOTOS ©2013, Jen Payne