I drank the bottle of lotion in three gulps, but if there was any alcohol in it, I couldn't tell.
I took a long, hot shower and reveled in being clean for the first time in two weeks, but then I had to put back on the same stinky, vomit-stained clothes I'd been wearing.
Words reverberate through my head: crack, heroin, hunger, theft, homeless, hopeless, despair.
I pull the headphones out of my ears and pull me back into myself. With a near physical shake, I remind myself that I am not a 19-year-old drug addict barely existing on the streets of Las Vegas. I am not living - barely - a life filled with loneliness and need and desperation. I remind myself that I am healthy and happy. I am just listening to a book while I am lucky enough to be working on a major creative project.
*****
I've been spending several hours a week cutting salmon out of glass. Ultimately, I'll need about 200 of them to complete the public art project I'm working on with Valdez's middle school students for their new school. That means I'll spend a lot of hours with my diamond-bladed ring saw. I can't hear the radio over the noise of the saw, so I've been listening to audiobooks on my phone. Right now, I'm listening to Isabel Allende's Maya's Notebook.
I randomly picked this book from the selections available through the Valdez library's connection to Listen Alaska. I can check out an audiobook just like I would a print book, and listen to it whenever I want. Isabel Allende is a well-known, prolific Chilean author - if you haven't read her, you should.
Maya's Notebook is a story told from the perspective of 19-yo Maya Vidal, a Chilean-American raised by her Nini (grandma) and Bopo (grandpa). After the death of her beloved Bopo, she falls in with a bad crowd and ultimately ends up on the streets of Las Vegas. I haven't finished the book yet, but she ends up being sent by her grandmothter to Chiloé, a coastal region of Chile, to hide from the FBI and mafia...and to recuperate. The girl's notebook alternates between the "present" in Chiloé and her time as an addict.
In the past three months I've read 25 books, and this is why: I love to be pulled out of my own life and thrust into the lives of others. A truly great book will leave me convinced not just that I've read a good story or witnessed a fascinating life, but that I have actually become another person. I quit reading and have to overcome whatever emotions the book has induced. On some days I'm convinced I'm married to a complete jerk, on others I'm thrilled by the throes of new love, and on some I have to climb out of the depths of despair. I think this immersion into another life might be even more intense when I'm listening to a book rather than reading it.
I find it interesting to be plunged into another existence this way, especially when it's one so very different from mine. There is no way I would ever have been or would be a drug addict in Las Vegas or anywhere else. But even knowing that, I can feel in a very visceral way Maya's despair as she sells her body for another hit. I'm sure I could never truly sink to those emotional depths, but I definitely emerge from the story feeling sad and depressed and even a little worthless. It takes effort to remind myself that I am not Maya, I am Sharry, and I am not living that life.
Am I alone in falling so deeply into books, or do you do that, too? Are there any particular books that have affected you so strongly? I'd love some suggestions for what I should listen to after I'm done being part Maya.
