“A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way”
When I went to get the papers from the driveway, I had to stand outside for a while. The world this morning is squint your eyes bright, the way it sometimes is after a heavy rain. The sunlight glistens off leaves and glints on car windows. The air smells fresh, like sheets dried outside on the clothesline. Glorious comes to mind.
This morning I had my sixth month dental check-up and cleaning. While I was sitting in the chair, I heard the drill. I winced at the sound of it.
Palm trees always seemed exotic to me when I was a kid. I remember seeing them pictured along the shoreline of some tropical beach in a National Geographic article. Green coconuts were usually clustered in and around the fronds. My first sighting of palm trees was in Ghana. The trees were in a line along the sides of the road. They exceeded all my childhood expectations.
The first big mountains I saw were the Alps. It was summer, and the meadows below the mountains were filled with wildflowers. Snow still capped many of the peaks, but the mountains were mostly lush and green. I knew all about the Alps. I had read Heidi. They looked just as she had described.
On my first trip to London I went to 221 Baker Street. I knew Sherlock Holmes never really lived there, but I still wanted to see it. My only disappointment was there wasn’t fog or the sounds of carriages and horses’ hooves.
Books took me away in time and place, and my mind’s eye imagined what the words described. I had been so many places before I went anywhere.
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May 20, 2010 at 5:05 pm
I was a Sherlock nut. I probably saw every play at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts and remember one time going by myself I was so enthralled. I thought Watson was an important ingredient in all the books and was even a better on stage, the actors who played him made for deeper impact than reading the books. I grew up with palm trees. It was Georgia pines that gave me the smell of a real tree. I was overwhelmed the first time we camped at Ft Benning on manuvers. WOW!
May 20, 2010 at 9:52 pm
Z&Me,
I thought palm trees were the most exotic of all. I grew up with fir and pine, and I have always loved the smell of those trees. Nothing beats a forest of fir trees.
May 20, 2010 at 6:57 pm
G’day Katry, Do books take you back to where you have already been? They do me. If I read about, say Africa or India, I can actually smell the place and sometimes actually taste it in my mouth. I don’t know how that works. A story of the sea has me feeling the spray and smelling the salt. Books can dredge memories, from the back of my mind, that have been forgotten for years. Wonderful things books, without them I would have to watch TV!
May 20, 2010 at 9:55 pm
Bob,
Books have taken me everywhere and just recently, just as you said, one has taken me back to Ghana. I could smell the food and the charcoal fires burning in the villages and could feel the moist air. I tasted red red as if I were still there. It was a memory but one which had come alive.
May 21, 2010 at 1:00 am
I always thought, that as hedges, palm trees were a bit of a handful. But the palms fronds are handy as roofing material. Experience with milk cows is of no consequence when gathering coconut milk.
Cheers
May 21, 2010 at 9:23 am
Minicapt,
And to think of all that climbing to trim them!
Cows are less inclined to be whacked against a rock for their milk.
May 21, 2010 at 9:13 pm
I like that line, “squint your eyes bright,” I know exactly what you mean.
May 21, 2010 at 10:01 pm
Thanks, Mary
It came to mind easily when I was outside.