Posts Tagged ‘awe’

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Trip souvenir: Boston Public Library Card

May 7, 2012

If you had a book (a book that you wrote), where would you want to see it? I mean, other than the New York Times’ bestseller list.

A few weeks after it came out, my father-in-law found my book on a store shelf near Harvard. He took a photo of it, making me quite happy.

Still, it was disappointing that most bookstores don’t carry my book, it is only available for special order, which is silly. And, while tempting, I did not follow through on my idea to call all of the Barnes & Nobels, order a copy and, when it arrives, say nevermind so that it goes to their shelves for people to admire (and buy).

It was exciting to see my book, to actually touch it, especially for the first time. But that was a little anticlimactic because many of my friends got a copy before I did (from Amazon). O’Reilly gave me several author copies. I picked out one for myself and gave a couple to family (most of my supportive and generous friends bought their own copies). What to do with the other copies?

I love the library. It is a place where you can borrow books. As a child, it was an all-you-can-eat mental buffet, my family could never have afforded even a hundredth of the books I blew through as soon as I got my own card. It was a child’s card initially but I snuck into the big library (“waiting for my mom” got me in with the security guards). I’d go pick up my pile from the kid’s ara and then read the adult books (ok, the adult encyclopedia, the guards still kept track of me). I suspect my love of Wikipedia comes from these formative years.

Since I love the library, I donated copies to my two local library systems. They were humorously confused by the donation. See, I had to find the right person to donate it to, the acquisition librarian, so it wouldn’t go into the neverending fundraising used book sale.

The exchange for the Santa Clara system happened in person. The librarian was a little confused. Even as I was handing her the books, she wanted to make sure that I didn’t want to be paid for them. And then she explained that these would go into the system and be available to all the libraries, not the just the Campbell one. (Yes, of course!)

But one sad (ok, ecstatically happy) thing is that my book is always checked out. Of both libraries. And each library got extra copies beyond the two each I gave them. I have never managed to pop in and get a picture of my book with the library labeling (and the Dewey decimal stickers!). I do check, especially when I’m bummed for one reason or another… knowing people have checked out my book is spirit lifting.

I had hoped that we’d see my book in the Library of Congress in Washington DC. Despite common wisdom, they do not carry every book. One book that the Library of Congress does not have is (cue dirge music) my book. What is this nation coming to?

Actually, if I’d known and planned ahead, I might have tried to give a copy of my book to the LOC. That would have been spiffy but I didn’t bring any copies on the trip because I believed the myth (that LOC carried everything). The congress people would do well to understand the problems associated with creating robust embedded systems, it is an important subject for all our future.

Sigh.

However, when all seems lost, at its darkest, there are other opportunities. In this case, Boston Public Library. You may have seen their lions:

Boston public library carries my book! But not for checkout… How odd, I don’t know if it is better that it is a reference only book and they are afraid it will be stolen or worse that people don’t get to take it home to truly enjoy it. In order to check my book out from BPL, you have to fill out a form, get a library card to finish filling out the form, and then hand it to the nice lady who will go retrieve the books from behind a “Staff Only” door.

Once you have the book, start by admiring the Dewey decimal and BPL signage. There are many marble topped tables and other beautiful desks that lend gravity to the library.

Ok, once you’ve appreciated the awesomeness of my book in the library, in the Boston Public Library, now it is time to take the book on a wee adventure (remember: you can’t leave the library). You shouldn’t run through the library giggling and squeeing. It is frowned upon though if you run fast enough, no one will catch you so it is ok. Be sure to take pictures in well known locations though you may need a confederate. Just in case, be sure you can run faster than the confederate.

Please send me your pictures with my book, particularly in famous locales, especially in famous libraries. It is really damn cool.
You may want to write a book just so you can try this out. Awesome fun!

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Pop psych and awe

April 25, 2012

When I was in high school, my mom brought home a pop psych quiz that was supposed to tell you all about yourself. Though I don’t think my answers have changed much since then, et’s take it together…

1. What is your favorite animal? List three reasons why this animal is your favorite.

Easy! My favorite animal is the platypus because it is odd. And even though it is odd, everybody likes them partially because it is odd. The third reason is harder, I’m torn between liking them for their extra sense (they have some sort of electical sensing apparaturs that helps them hunt for small creatures in the water) or their hidden, nearly unknown lethality. Those venemous spurs are not good for anyone that tries to piss off the platypus. I guess the third reason is that they have secret super powers, something I very much respect.

2. What is your favorite color? List three reasons why.

This is harder, I shift between green and blue. But it has been a blue-is-my-favorite day so let’s go with that. I like a nice, true blue, medium dark. It is my favorite because it is serene, deep and strong.

3. What is your favorite type of body of water? Three reasons why.

No question here, the ocean is my favorite. I love the awe it inspires, the incredible beauty and the raw inevitable power.

Since I don’t really remember what things are supposed to mean, I won’t be able to interpret the answers for us but I recall the last answer shocking my (not-at-all puritanical) mother.

The awe and terror of the ocean is a constant in my life. When things go badly, it is to the ocean I want to go to be reassured that life will go on. I want to see something so much bigger than myself with a permanence that i feel deep in my bones. The ocean makes me feel insignificant and yet connected to the world.

The ocean represents life to me but also the erosion associated age and death. The ocean giveth and the ocean taketh away. And, like the waves, it is inevitable and neither good nor bad, it just is. And that is ok. The crystal-clear moments of perfectnes in my life? Almost all of them happened at the beach or on a pier.

I was surprised to find the same awesome beauty in the Mohave desert. The vast hugeness is part of it. In April, the Mohave is mostly brown with tufts of green; different colors of green though: the blue green of nearly seaweed, the brown green and silver gray, the yellow-green, and the brown-green. Oh, there is too much brown fo rme to want to stay there but it is amazing to see. And incredible to think that settlers coming to California had to cross this nearly alien landscape. As we drove across, C said that this is what the bottom of the ocean must look like. Tufts of grass, seaweed green and red plants growing higher. Life is here, you can feel it, but it is subtle and quiet about it.

But the Mohave isn’t a pretty place. Pretty is such an insipid word compared to desert, just as it is when applied to the ocean. The Mohave has the raw power of the ocean for me. And the feeling of insignificance.

C said he felt that way but just for a moment or two. For me, it was much longer though not the never-ending feeling I can get from the ocean (though driving by the ocean doesn’t do it for me so this comparison is weak).

The Painted Desert gave me this feeling of awe but C says not so much. And the Meteor Crater was neat but didn’t have it. Yesterday, after a bad night’s sleep and driving through Texas, all I thought about was how everything looked like a cartoon and I was sure to see Wile E. Coyote soon. Today had the lovely green and the trees but no awe. My response when I saw the Mississippi? I thought it would be bigger.

I worry that I’m maybe a little addicted to the feeling. I don’t know where to get the next fix. I bet Washington DC has some spots that will induce the feeling but will man-made monuments feel real enough? I’ve only gotten it from wild things, big things.

 

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Can’t go on

April 23, 2012

We went to the Petrified Forest National Park today.

I was driving this morning (or there would have been a post posted about Meteor Crater while we were in the car instead of much later). Anyway, I didn’t get a snack when I should have and ended up way too hungry. I’d hiked around Flagstaff’s outskirts and Meteor Crater on a breakfast of coffee and a protein bar.

So, I had gotten well into the low blood sugar mode that includes tired headaches, finding concentration difficult (kind of important when going that fast). I wasn’t sure I really wanted to see something else new. But we had a picnic lunch and needed a place to eat it.

When we finally got to the exit for the Petrified Forest, we got out at the visitor center with our picnic (grocery store bagels, cheese, hummus and a half pound of fresh cut fruit). I gobbled it down and felt much better, like we should go on and see whatever it is they made a national park around before heading off to Albuquerque.

OMG, I think I may be the first person to have discovered this incredibly beautiful place. (Yeah, the roads and paved paths managed to leave me that illusion.) I mean, have you seen the Painted Desert? It was incredible. As with Meteor Crater, no picture does it justice. It was huge. More than, that though, the Painted Desert was incredibly, awesomely beautiful.

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I look at that picture and it is missing all the colors, the incredible striations and hills of individual colors. The sky was huge, like the normal California sky is just a little bitty part of the sky here. I don’t have the words and I don’t think the pictures are enough but they are better than the words so I’ll choose only a few more.

These pictures are just reminders to me, like a short list jotted down means a lot more to the person who wrote the list than to someone who comes across it later. Imagine that level of difference between these pictures and the real thing. Then multiply by ten.

It just went on and on. We went to several vista points and each one was majestic and breathtaking.

But this national park is not a mesmerizingly beautiful one-trick pony. It also has evidence of indigenous people, including the ruins of a pueblo city and Newspaper Rock,  a wall of petroglyphs. Further on, there are huge logs of petrified wood, each one a giant jewel from eons ago. I don’t mean little chips of wood-rocks. These were giant trees make into giant geode colored rocks.

However, we didn’t see those. We got to the end of the Painted Desert and didn’t go on. Part of the reason was because C was tired (didn’t sleep well last night) and we were both pretty hot. But that wasn’t really it…

I couldn’t take in anymore. The painted desert was so mindblowingly beautiful that I was a little afraid to go on. What could be a second act to that? Why dilute the beauty?

And, part of me wondered, what if it got better? My brain was full of the box of paints splattered across the desert. If it got better, it (my brain) was just going to go kablooey.

I turned that into a joke but I meant it, I really didn’t want to go on because I wanted to let my mind settle, to soak up what I had and to fix the picture in my head that my camera just can’t capture.

 

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