Reading, Riting no Rithemetic

 

In the last couple of weeks, I've been on Boston Common, Jamica Plain and Revere as I turned the pages of a Tess Gerritsen Novel.

I've walked with Zelensky in the Ukraine. 

Last night, I was feeling the surgery of soldiers blown apart in Vietnam. The smell of the blood, the red dust everywhere felt real. Songs mentioned brought back my life in the sixties.

Someone once said, "reading lets you live other lives."

In between books, I'm living a life. 

My Geneva village is lush from all the rain. Walks to where the horses and donkeys graze, the mulberries in the garden, the view of Mont Blanc, and the corn stalks growing by the day add to my life.

My working on my novel, memoir and non-fiction book occupies part of my time. Holding hands with my husband as we watch a Netflix film with the dog next (or between us) add so much to my life.

Our free writes in a café with my husband and friend are a joy as are meeting up with other friends, some of whom were once part of my daily life and now are meet-ups for a meal and/or chats.

It all helps to negate to the horror of what I'm watching in my birth country. It is hard to watch the violence, the lies, the rhetoric, the undoing of things I so believed in, of things I worked for. 

I was an active citizen besides voting. I demonstrated. Depending on the issue, I called my legislators (state and federal). I lobbied for laws at the Massachusetts State House. I didn't hit the legislator who asked, "What does a cute little girl like you care about this?" He was referring to the equal rights amendment. I was a single mom in my mid-thirties.

I fear for every fertile woman in the U.S. I spent a depressing year plus writing Coat Hangers and Knitting Needles, about the history of abortion to know it will never be stopped.

Books do not help me when I take a shower, and I think of all the people in Gaza who do not have the luxury. 

When I buy fresh veggies at the marché, I'm grateful that I have enough to eat.

I can do nothing about the horrors of the world. I can do nothing about my birth country's decline. I'm only a speck in the universe, one living her own life and many others through reading.