Turn the Page

Some people paint, others enjoy the night life, as in dancing, or even rubbing elbows at the neighborhood bar.  Oh, I’ve tried that, all right (the elbow part), but I prefer the sedate, the staid, the cerebral interchange atop the expanse of long tables with coffee or iced-tea at my reach.  And I love books--what can I say?  I am the worm, inching my way through the pages, gnawing past contents and tributes to chapters where journeys await, where I can thus enter into the mind of another human being, an author extant, living or dead.  To that end I look forward, every month, to our book club--Turn the Page, as we lovingly call it.

I suppose I should offer apologies to Bob Seger, whose song of the same name is well known.  Still, there is no worry of copyright infringement--we are a casual lot in casual clothes wanting only to read and then discuss the literary particulars.  Anyone is welcome--I think even Bob would delight in our humble club.

It is a cross section of good people; housewives, teachers, engineers, secretaries and even truck drivers--literary love does not discriminate.  Presently, we have fourteen members, yet attendance is hit and miss; if we have half show up, then we are doing good.  I keep the minutes--so, what would that make me?  The secretary, so to speak?  Perhaps, however, we don’t use such a banal term.  No, I am referred to as the Index--yep, that’s me, the Index.  The Index will now read the minutes.

But the minutes usually take a minute or less--we are too eager to discuss our assigned book.  I wish I could say I assign what books to read.  No, I cannot--the Forward does that.  Yet I will say that the Forward and I are on the same page when it comes to preferred books.  We love the classics.  Oh, there are times when a Grisham or a King or an Auel or an Amy Tan are assigned.  But more often it is Charles Dickens, or Herman Melville, or Mark Twain or Ernest Hemmingway. 

There is a timelessness to the classics; my senses are immersed, my soul is stirred.  I can see the scarlet “A” worn by Hester Pyrnne, I can see Ahab atop the great white whale striking with harpoon.  And I can see the man who stopped the motor of the world, as per Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.  Who is John Galt?  So the book begins and resonates with that succinct phrase that has entered our social consciousness. The Forward assigned this book during a two month interlude to allow us extra time.  A book that is over a thousand pages, yet well worth the read.  The Forward is wise.

We often meet at Peaberry’s Cafe and Bakery which allows us to indulge in Biscotti, Panini (or a pastry) and, of course, a cozy atmosphere.  In the summer, though, with a late sun, we are challenged by bright sunlight, despite window blinds.  We all laughed when, at the July meeting, we discussed, The Sun Also Rises.  To this day I think the Forward assigned this purposely.  And so, there you have it, a book selection based on the inclination of the sun!  I eyed the Forward pursuant to my suspicion, and he just slyly exposed his crooked, yellow teeth.  But the summer sun shone through slats, illuminating his face beyond what is fair to any face, doing him a gross injustice.  To me, he looked like an old man who just came in from the sea.

Yet we all come in from the workaday once a month for camaraderie at Turn the Page.  And why not?  It is worth the journey one is so privileged to experience via words, by way of sentences adroitly structured to evoke emotion, from the paragraphs assembled to draw us in like the eager devotees we are to cross thresholds set down by the labors of those whose love is writing. 

We have been on the prairie in a little house, we have stood and laughed like Howard Roark on a granite cliff, we have felt the windblown sands in depression-era Oklahoma as in The Grapes of Wrath.  Also, Wind, Sand and Stars--one of the most intriguing books I have ever read.  This is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.  I can still feel myself in his airplane, fighting the headwinds amid the Andes of Peru in motionless suspension, more or less--a one propeller craft at full throttle, barely making progress.

That’s not the case, however, at Turn the Page.  We progress, at our own speeds to be sure, yet the progress is that of a dynamic interchange of human spirit, of diverse points of view, of rounding the edges one sometimes is beset with due to tunnel vision and improvident outlooks.  Simply put, we warm cold spots born by the chill of ubiquitous aggravation.  “The book’s the rage,” I like to say, “so read with us at Turn the Page.” 

Despite its simple mediocrity, I shall continue saying this, because I like it and it seems inviting enough.  Yet I will always feel it does lack some depth, some warmth of soul.  Hopefully, attendance at Turn the Page will provide such virtues.  Far be it from me to descend into the maudlin, but the reader is the focus--not the club itself.  For without the reader, any selection, classic or not, would be rendered meaningless, wherein all pages turned might as well be without words.


910 Words
Writer’s Cramp Winner
11-21-15