I go to a lot of book clubs because my thesis is on my book clubs so yes, you will be hearing a lot about them. I went to another one on Monday night, my “shoeless” book club (because shoes are not allowed). An eclectic bunch in socks and slippers, roaming around a gorgeous downtown apartment talking about the selected literature of the month. This time, the topic was Borges, a true giant in the literary world, a visionary thinker, and one of the smartest guys who ever lived. He’s basically a walking encyclopedia, and his works are dense and complicated, and make you do what all great literature should make you do – THINK. But more importantly, and we discussed this in our book club, Borges seems to really make you want to write. So my tip of the week: if you’re having writer’s block, pick up Library of Babel and in the words of The Matrix (whose themes are interspersed throughout Borges’ works and which just so happens to be my favorite movie) “Free your mind.”
My fiasco of the week occured just prior to the Shoeless Book Club. After picking up 12 copies of the next meeting’s book (Shakespeare’s The Tempest! Now featured in BAM), I got on the Q train and took it one stop over to Canal Street. Over the past few months I have used the train probably more times than my whole life combined, all thanks to HopStop.com. The problem is, in this case, HopStop wanted me to make a left on said “unnamed road.” I walked on, with my 20 lbs of books in on hand, pocketbook in the other, looking for a dark alley? A random cross street? Possibly a direction-giving angel?
I sought out the angels on every corner. I gave my look of desperation to many strangers on the street, hands turned over in confusion, and pleaded with them – “Hudson Streeet?!” Two women on separate occasions attempted to show me where we were on their cell phone GPS, possibly more concerned with showing off that they actually had this technology and not that the map was reading off to me like an obscure dialect of Swahili. Admittedly, directions are my biggest weakness. The one thing I can rely on is that my instincts are almost always dead wrong. Oftentimes, if my insides say “Go right!”, I will make the L shape with my left hand and go left. Other strangers were equally unhelpful, pointing in directions where the road was ending, and/or not knowing we were in Manhattan. Two old ladies in matching puffy jackets who didn’t speak English to save their lives, tried to reason with me. “Hud-son Street,” I mouthed slowly. “Ah, Hudon swaygegda,” one said while making a vertical sweeping motion with her hand. I am pretty sure they were sending me to the Hudson River. And one guy was equally flustered, “I dunno maybe SOHO?!” His attitude and accent sounded strangely familiar, and upon his asking if I was from the Jewish Syrian community, I confirmed this recognition. It’s a small world after all?
I called my sister half in sobs, “I’m lostttt!”
“Where are you?” she asked. “Where am I?!” I shouted to the nearest New York stranger. Luckily, I was a block away from my destination, and my disaster was finally at a close. 40 minutes of agony later I was at the Shoeless Book Club ready to discuss Borges’ Labyrinths. Labyrinths. Haha very funny (=sarcasm).
Adios!
Rachel Lily
Tags: book club, Borges, Canal Street, encyclopedia, GPS, hopstop, Labyrinths, Library of Babel, lost in New York, shoeless, Swahili, The Matrix, The Tempest, writer's block