Inner focus
As a difficult winter looms, books that offer self-care tips have appeal./
Winter’s approaching and it looks like it will be another season of limited travel and staying home. Bear with me for some thoughts, mostly about books, mostly related.
There’s been a lot of talk now about “self-care,” a term that often makes me wince but I’m coming around. And my definition of “self-care” includes books.
To prep for the oncoming darker season, I got these: Jenny Odell’s “How to Do Nothing,” Pico Iyer’s “The Art of Stillness” and Rebecca Solnit’s “Hope in the Dark.”
“How to Do Nothing” blew my mind. Just listen to this: “There is a kind of nothing that’s necessary for, at the end of the day, doing something. When overstimulation has become a fact of life, I suggest that we reimagine #FOMO as #NOMO, the necessity of missing out, or if that bothers you, #NOSMO, the necessity of sometimes missing out.”
Iyer’s book made my pulse decrease (and I’m not exagerating here. I actually saw it on my watch): “The need for an empty space, a pause, is something we have all felt in our bones; it’s the rest in a piece of music that gives it resonance and shape.”
And while I’ve just started the Solnit, this resonated: “Hope is the story of uncertainty, of coming to terms with the risk involved in not knowing what comes next, which is more demanding than despair and, in a way, more frightening.”
I’d like to think the books have calmed my spirit, brought me back to myself a bit and given me some energy to face the next who knows how long period. Upstate New York winters are notoriously raw. And until the virus is controlled, we need to be comfortable with uncertainty and also being still.
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Usually around this year, I read a spooky book. But real life is already scary enough, so I’ve resisted until I saw my neighbor left out a free copy of Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History.” I read this years ago and have since learned that there’s this Instagram trend called Dark Academia. Many of those interested seem to be drawn to Tartt’s first book about a small group of stu
dents studying classics at a New England college who kill one of their own. (That’s how the book starts so no spoiler there.) I also picked up a copy of “The Little Friend” by Tartt to round off my collection of her three books, which also includes “The Goldfinch,” winner of the Pulitzer.
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I finally went back inside a library, the first time since March. Because only 15 people were allowed in at a time, we waited in line as if it was the world’s geekiest nightclub. The bouncer/ librarian warned us it would be different. And it was, well, weird. I admire and appreciate what they’ve done to keep us safe and also provide a really efficient curbside delivery at the Bethlehem Public Library. I got a little choked up when I walked in to a stark reminder that we’re still in the midst of a pandemic. The study carrels, comfy chairs and the half-finished puzzles are gone. There’s plexiglass up in front of the circulation desk.
The library is usually a hub, where you’d bump into friends and neighbors. I know it’s what they have to do and I’m grateful I can step foot in ours, but this pandemic grabs me every time just when I think I’ve gotten used to the new ways.
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I jammed the Tartts, Solnit and the Odell and the many other books I’ve accumulated this year on some newly cleared shelves in the parlor. I did not get rid of books; instead, the CDS that we haven’t used in years were relocated to the attic, where they’ll probably stay forever. On the shelves, most of my fiction books are alphabetized, sort of. I thought I’d rearrange, but I wanted my “self-care” books easily accessible. There’s been this “Home Edit” book out there (along with a prolific Instagram page and a Netflix series) that shows pictures of books organized by rainbow colors. I admit that I do have a stack of red books, but I am not organizing my books in rainbow order. There’s nothing soothing about not being able to find a book. I’d rather have my comforting messy stacks, my one red shelf and my quasi-alphabetized system.
In a year when self-care is craved, make books part of that.