This morning I was looking over my books for something to bring with me to the coffee shop, something to look through after writing, and my first choice was Suttree, my favorite novel, cuz it’s immersive and heartfelt and mournful and funny and I knew it might help to lift me out of my slump.

            It would also remind me of other times I’ve read it, though.

            It’s the book I jumped into when Marianne moved away.

            It’s the book I jumped into after the breakup with R.

            It feels at this point like too much of my own past clings to the cover.

            It’d be better, I figured, to read forward (if that makes sense). Pick something up that I haven’t read before. Better yet: read one of the many many couple dozen books I’ve had for years and that I keep putting off because they’re too intimidating.

            Yesterday, on a whim, I picked up this Pauline Kael anthology I’ve had for a while. She was writing mostly about movies in the 1960s and ‘70s, but I bought the anthology just a couple years ago, when I was still watching movies from the ‘30s, working my way up through the List. It’s been sitting on my shelf ignored since then; but, realizing that I’m done with the 1960s now and that I’ve finally seen a lot of the movies she’s writing about here, I went at it. Took it to Pasion del Cielo yesterday and I’ve got it with me again today.

I’m thinking for now that the best way to acclimate to the shocks of the past few days is to accept new ideas and voices into my head. New lenses by which to look at things.