Wind Up

so i went out. it was close to ten and i had absolutely nothing i needed to do that could be accomplished after ten on a monday. i decided to pretend that i needed to go grocery shopping. i live awfully close to safeway. its red neon sign lights up the night sky out my bay window. turns the mint all rosy.

as soon as i walked out the door into the crisp october air i knew i had made the right decision. i felt awake. i felt alive. i felt like freshly polished silver. i did not need to go grocery shopping. i ended up in the book store. holding three books.

i'm reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle again. the first time i read it, i had carried it in my pack from a sale table in Birmingham, England to a hammock in Palolem, India. i swung in my yellow and purple hammock, slung between two coconut palms, and read it. i read while eagles rode the heat rising off the sand. i read while nimble men scaled palms to collect fermented sap from the tops of the trees.

in the book, mr. okada climbed down into the well. in my room, feeling the cool earth floor under my toes, i saw how far from home i had come. the self inside my self dared to emerge. to come out from under my skin.

last week i decided to read Wind-Up again.

but in the bookstore, holding jonathan lethem's Gun with Occassional Music and neal stephenson's The Cryptonomicon, i remembered the new york times crossword. this sunday the theme of the puzzle was Don Quixote, a book i have not read. so i went and looked and there it was, a huge used copy of Don Quixote de la Mancha by miguel de cervantes. and i bought it.

i think i'll read it in honduras. did i tell you i'm going to honduras? i am. and i'm bringing Don Quixote with me.