addictions & reflections

i am a person of addictions. good ones and bad ones. but there are just certain things i cannot live without. cigarettes, as you may have read earlier, unfortunately are one. but the good ones outweigh the bad-for-you ones. magazines. i must have hundreds piled around my house, despite semi-regular purgings. early early mornings, though not necessarily an addiction, are an essential part of my days off. 4am, 5am. when i'm the only person awake in the whole world. me and little diva dog, that is. and eventually birds and squirrels and chipmunks. the other is books. i have to have at least 2 good books at the ready. if i'm getting near the end of one, and don't have the next one picked out yet, it makes me uncomfortable. so it stands to reason, given the volume of volumes i read, i'll end up with a "sacred selection" of books that are like best friends. i'll never lend them (sorry), and keep them in a special place of honor next to my bed. today i went to Barnes & Noble and grabbed one with an interesting title. can i tell you....this is the Book of Books. the read of a lifetime. sacred of sacred books. you MUST go now and get it. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. even the title fits with my current life...my favorite artist, Michael DeMeng, talks about being an alchemist in his new book. i came across a real find recently at a junk shop - an old alchemist cabinet. so the whole alchemy thing is voodoo-ing it's way thru my life. i'm only on page 29 and can tell this is a call-in-sick-to-work book. here's part of the prologue (you remember the story about Narcissus - the boy who knelt at the lake every day to gaze at his own beautiful reflection? one day he fell in and drowned and a flower grew in that very spot. here's where we join up...) When Narcissus died, the goddess of the forest appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh water, transformed into a lake of salty tears. 'why do you weep?' the goddess asked. 'I weep for Narcissus,' the lake replied. 'Ah, it is no surprise that you weep for him, for although we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand.' 'But...was Narcissus beautiful?' the lake asked. 'Who better than you to know that,' replied the goddess in wonder. ' after all, it was by your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate himself.' The lake was silent for some time. Finally it said : 'I weep for Narcissus, but i never noticed he was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depth of his eyes, my own beauty reflected." to add my own comments now would be disruptive. go. read. L.