Even Cowgirls get Nostalgic

10:47 PM

Two or three times a year I get this way, a deep yearning feeling and a need to tap into that which resonates.  I often look to books, to specific authors - Hunter S Thompson, Herman Hesse, PJ  O'Rourke - but more often than not I reach for Tom Robbins.  I gather about me the books I have of his (I should really try and get them all), like good friends comforting me.  Even stacked up beside the bed I feel more at peace, that nearby are Amanda, Bernard Mickey Wrangle, Larry Diamond and all those other characters who tug at the absurd brilliance of living.

But, here, I must admit, the last time I picked up Another Roadside Attraction, a book I must read annually, it felt different.  As I gulped in the pages that usually bind me to a much needed world of sensual spiritualism, profound and preposterous, it felt....off.  I wasn't as transfixed, I wasn't thrown immediately into that state of grace it usually transports me to.  Fuck me if it didn't actually feel a bit silly.

How awful!  I can't outgrow Tom Robbins!  When one's lifetime heroes begin to fall, by death (RIP David Bowie, Hunter S Thompson) or by ones own maturity/de-sensitivity, who or what replaces them?

At 39 and a half, tonight , I still collect my friendly books about me.  I nearly dare not read them but I will.  And I'll hope that they still spark.  That growing old mustn't mean losing everything that once galvanised and gratified.

But...if it does, if I must leave the light of those who brightened my past days, then let me search out new torches in the dark.

I wish to give up social media, with its  promise that it keeps us 'connected' and turn again to wordsmiths, philosophers and poets who can connect us to something greater than ourselves and our little (wonderful) lives.  

I love the new year and all the commitments of change and resolve and betterment!  So far I've exercised, dieted, meal planned, quit social media (twice) and parented better than the whole of last  year.

Long live 2016!  May it be well lit.




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