19 thoughts on “falling in love over a book — competition”

1. Close but not quite. Kevin and I met at Worldcon in Glasgow. He was living in San Francisco, I was in Melbourne.But actually we don’t read the same books very often. Same genre, yes, same authors, no.

2. Worldcon. Glasgow. There must be something in the water. I met Pete at Worldcon ’05. I’m from Germany. He’s a Brit. I had come there to meet my favourite authors, my first con. He’d been going to cons from the tender age of six weeks. Somehow we ended up doing backstage stuff for the Masquerade together, and stayed in touch. It took us another six months or so to meet up again and fall ridiculously in love, but we haven’t looked back since.

3. Katie:That’s lovely. It was ’95 when Kevin and I met, but we were in charge of the Events Division for ’05 so you and Pete met up while you were working for us. I am so pleased.

4. I have a story about how once the lust was there but the connection wasn’t until…Once upon a time friends introduced me to a great gal who lived in a small cabin with a loft by three aspen trees near the Animus River. The friends were right that we’d peer closely right away. “How like a tree,” I thought when I first saw her hitching one stubborn leg to get up from a wooden table to greet me. Even that first night, she in her loft, I in my sleeping bag on the floor, energy rippled like the wind in the leaves of those aspen trees out the front door. “How like a tree,” I thought again when she laughed as we splashed in the pool at Harbin Hot Springs the next day, her laughter like gurgling notes of joy drawn up from deep roots. That evening she might have been sending signals for me to climb the ladder to her loft, but these things can be hard for me to decipher. Clearly sleepless I settled into a chair by her lamp with one of the books from her shelf: Sonnets to Orpheus by Rilke. It is dense and intense poetry. And as I read I was aware of a measure of tossing and turning above me in the loft. Finally I needed to hear lines aloud to grasp them and I called up, “Do you mind if I read poetry to you?” Perfect. Feeling both of our brains, oh and spirits, wrap around rich writing tumbled aside self-consciousness and finally the games began…How delicious to think of her again. It’s been years since I’ve seen her. Maybe I’ll look her up, send her a book! Jean r

5. I was volunteering at the Out On Screen film fest in Vancouver. I saw Anne-Mary there for the first time. I knew I’d fall hopelessly in love with her, so I ran away and hid in a little used bookstore a couple of blocks away. To my surprise, she walked in 15 minutes later. I was still scared, so I ducked behind a shelf. She wandered around, bought a book and left. She didn’t see me. She almost never sees me if I don’t want to be seen. I went home and posted Chapter 7 of <>Hopscotch<> by Julio Cortazar (as translated by Gregory Rabassa) on my now-dead http://www.totallyirrelevant.com blog:<>“I touch your mouth, I touch the edge of your mouth with my finger, I am drawing it as if it were something my hand was sketching, as if for the first time your mouth opened a little, and all I have to do is close my eyes to erase it and start all over again, every time I can make the mouth I want appear, the mouth which my hand chooses and sketches on your face, and which by some chance that I do not seek to understand coincides exactly with your mouth which smiles beneath the one my hand is sketching on you.”<>Anne-Mary and I kept running into each other for two more weeks before I decided any resistance on my end was futile. We agreed to meet purposefully for dinner and a long walk around the seawall. She missed the last train, so we decided she should spend the night at my place. It was raining a little as we walked to my apartment. Rain makes me confessional, so I confessed how I’d hidden away from her in the bookstore that very first day, how I watched her wander in. I asked her what book had she gotten back then. She said, “<>Hopscotch<> by Julio Cortázar.”

6. I met my P 13 years ago, my first day at my new job. As we were introduced, I had this intense feeling that I wanted to know this woman. She was beautiful, funny, intelligent and utterly intriguing to me.We quickly realized we shared a love of books, Everyday we would walk for an hour at lunch and talk about books we had read and how we connected or didn’t connect to the stories.I also found out she had just celebrated her 25th wedding anniversary and had a child. Try as I might, I couldn’t stop myself, I fell head over heels in love with her. I was so terrified she would find out and be gone from my life, I could never acknowledge what I felt.She left the company three years after I got there but we stayed in touch. My feelings were growing stronger and I sensed that she might be thinking of me as more than a friend. I was still paralyzed by my fear but thankfully she had enough courage for both of us. She confessed that she was in love with me and we embarked on a long torrid affair. I was racked with guilt. I did not want to hurt her husband or her child, yet I could not stop myself.After two years of sneaking around I became ill. I was sick for 8 months, no one could figure out what was wrong and I could barely get out of bed. I ended up on long term disability, living with my parents! For three months we did not see each other although we spoke on the phone everyday.Finally, someone figured out that I had a parasite, I was treated and returned to work and went right back to P. She decided to leave her husband and we moved in together. We have been together for ten years. We still read together for hours at night and despite the fact that we are having a tough time right now, I wouldn’t trade my life with anyone for a minute.

7. cheryl, katie: hey, genre is close enough for government work :) And what a small world it is…jean, ah, poetry. I always write poetry for the women I fall in love with–but I’m not sure I’ve ever read it out loud, except (not romantical at all) <>Poetry for Cats<>.karina, I find those moments of synchronicity astounding. I know humans have pattern-seeking minds, so on some level we just really want everything to make sense, but there are times when it’s very difficult to believe in a random universe.rory, so many people think love is easy–but it’s not, particularly. Oh, falling in love is, but staying afloat in it can be. The story of me and Kelley makes some people all misty-eyed but, you know what? It was *hard* being from different continents, hard being already in a relationship with a lovely woman who had done neither of us any harm, hard being apart while we tore up and then remade our lives. I probably would trade a few of the hard bits, if I could. But I wouldn’t trade the whole for anything.

8. nicola, I agree that staying afloat in love is hard work. I think there’s more than one person who is right for each of us. There has to be at least a thousand. Once we’ve found one (I’ve been lucky enough to find three so far), the tricky part is figuring out how not to mess up big time. I blew off two and through those painful processes managed to learn enough sense, carefulness and honest commitment to marry the third one, to keep us afloat. I also agree that it’s hard to believe in a random universe. *Uh-oh, I can feel it coming… Nerd Alert!* What we commonly perceive as randomness may just be a complex pattern. Or not even complex, just a pattern we haven’t yet figured out. Like fractals. Their algorithms are usually simpler than the ones necessary to describe the basic geometric shapes. But we couldn’t properly draft the infinite recursiveness of fractals until computers came along to show us the elegant and minimalistic patterns in clouds, tree growth, storms, seashores, radio static, and so on.I do feel there is a pattern or, better yet, an order to the universe. David Bohm calls it the Implicate Order. He said in an < HREF="http://www.fdavidpeat.com/interviews/bohm.htm" REL="nofollow">interview<>: <>“…a BBC science program showed a device that illustrates these things very well. It consists of two concentric glass cylinders. Between them is a viscous fluid, such as glycerin. If a drop of insoluble ink is placed in the glycerin and the outer cylinder is turned slowly, the drop of dye will be drawn out into a thread. Eventually the thread gets so diffused it cannot be seen. At that moment there seems to be no order present at all. Yet if you slowly turn the cylinder backward, the glycerin draws back into its original form, and suddenly the ink drop is visible again. The ink had been enfolded into the glycerin, and it was unfolded again by the reverse turning.”<>The cylinders of this universe have been turning for so long, its origins drawn out into invisible threads for ages… That we’re even able to sense this order and dream about understanding it, able to work at reverse-engineering our minds back into that first drop of ink… blows my mind. Love is one of those powerful manifestations of synchronicity, just like déjà vu. Love makes me feel purposeful, on the right path, that there’s hope for us after all.

9. I like this competition a lot better than the breaking-up-over-a-book one.

10. >It was *hard* being from different continents, hard being already in a relationship with a lovely woman who had done neither of us any harm, hard being apart while we tore up and then remade our lives.>This is exactly true for me, as well.We “met” online, reading each other's unpublished stories. I started to fall for her before I even knew what she looked like. By the time we met, it was far too late. I'm not sorry though.

11. karina, I really like that droplet-between-two-cylinders notion. Thank you. And, yeah, making is much more interesting that breaking. (At least when it comes to lurve and books. Breaking can be a *lot* of fun if it involves a hammer…)anonymous, I’m glad you’re not sorry. Love is a good thing. It’s always a good thing, even if we lose it.

12. We were introduced by my best friend from high school. I had just come out in a blazing ball of glory. She was beautiful and brilliant. Unfortunately, I was shining too brightly to see her. Five years later, out of college and living in the same city, we discovered through that same best friend that we’d been unknowingly living a block away from each other. She was still beautiful. I was still oblivious. But I let her help me pack the remnants of a long-dead, recently ended relationship before I moved west and she moved east to follow our respective dreams. Mere weeks before we left I felt little tendrils of electricity between us, like the kind that form before lightning strikes.Fast forward; I was consumed by school, my father’s death, and loneliness. We were out of touch. Desperate, I emailed; the connection was quick and intense–and friendly—nothing more.But one night as we chatted, the mood shifted to something more intimate, and she shared with me parts of a novel she was writing. As I read, I connected so surely that I felt I .knew. this woman to her core. All my senses were engaged with the story and with her. I saw the woman; her perspective, her history, her passions, come out on that paper, and finally the lightning struck. We’ve been together ever since.

13. Sally and I met over a wonderful book. A biology textbook. Yeah, the old story of a horny teacher and a gorgeous student plays out again. In explanation, she was troubled and divorcing and I was troubled and divorcing. We came together in lust and love in a time of pain in January,1978, and have never spent a night apart since June,1980. Now we read all the time, but are no longer troubled or in pain. Life is beautiful when you find the other half of yourself.

14. janine, reading someone’s fiction really is a window into who they are. I fell in love with Kelley the instant I saw here; I fall in love with her more every time I read her work.woody, a biology book seems to very appropriate to a story of love and lust :)A note: a couple of people have shared their book/love stories over on my < HREF="http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=167271744&blogID=439760330" REL="nofollow">MySpace blog<>.

15. <>Love is Where You Find It<><>by Lee Anne Phillips<>The first thing I saw was the leaves in her hair.It was across a crowded room, of course, isn’t that the way these things start? She was tall, vaguely Norwegian-looking, with blonde hair done up in an unruly bun at the back of her head, and there were these leaves, like laurel, only rich chocolate brown, and there were three of them, loosely clustered in the swirls of her hair.She walked toward me, which wasn’t at all strange, since all the women walked toward me sooner or later — I was the one with the food.I guess I’d better explain, or you might think I was a UN worker in a refugee camp, and in a way I was. I was at the coffee bar in Mama Bears Bookstore in Oakland, California. Maybe you’ve heard of it? Gone now but not forgotten, at least in the East Bay Area. It was early Christmas Eve, and we had a tradition of hosting potluck dinners at all the major holidays, Christmas, New Year’s Thanksgiving, Pesach, you name it. Our attendees were those with nowhere else to go, for the most part, the women whose families had kicked them out, weren’t speaking to them, were somewhere out there in America; the women who’d fled, found refuge, in one of the largest lesbian communities on the West Coast, the queer Mecca for girls.The Gay guys had San Francisco, but we had Oakland, scattered of course, nothing like the Castro, but even the Castro’s nothing like the Castro any more.Anyway, there she was, walking toward me, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was looking at me too, which was surprising, since so many had eyes only for the stuff laid out to eat. And there was a lot there. I’d made my garlic bread and cracked crabs, because I’m that kind of Jew, and it was Christmas, so what the heck?Don’t get me wrong, I don’t actually <>eat<> crabs, not because I’m at all religious, because I’m not, but it’s sort of… I don’t know… not quite right. Let’s just say I’m not in the <>habit<> of eating crab, even in Chinese food, where there’s a folk rumour — or notion at least — that the crab in Chinese is entirely compatible with the stringencies of kashruth. Something about the size of the crab bits, I think, but I’m not an expert, because it’s all so… medieval and obsessive, and it’s probably a myth. I haven’t got time to worry about crap like that.But I’m a terrific cook, and I knew this guy at Fisherman’s wharf who offered them to me at cost — not much call for crabs at Christmas I guess — and well… I’m that kind of Jew. While I was across the Bay, I picked up a half-dozen loaves of Boudin sourdough, and if you haven’t had it you’re going to be sorry some day when you do, grieving for all the tasteless cardboard loaves you’ve wasted good calories and tuna fish on. I stopped by Rainbow Grocery too, to buy Strauss sweet butter and organic garlic from Gilroy. Most places all you find is from China, rarely fresh, and never organic.So there I am, with my crabs and bread, and she says to me, smiling, showing teeth, “Hi. I saw you here. What’s good?”Well, don’t get me started… My stuff is good, of course, but there was lots of other stuff, a fair roast turkey, just a little dry, most of which I’d carved and laid out on a platter, a raft of nameless salads, sweet potatoes, mashed spuds, cookies and cakes and brownies, but they were at the other end of the counter, so I say, all suave like, “Well, it’s all pretty good I think, but I made these and those,” pointing to my crabs and bread, a platter of each on either side of me.“You’re kidding me! You cooked your own crabs? You didn’t buy them at the store somewhere?”“Well, I didn’t fish them out of the sea, so I’m not completely responsible, but they were still alive when I boiled them, spiced them, and cracked them.” I used to be a cook, so I had the tools, although I was a little squeamish about dropping the poor little things into the boiling water. Still and all, better than being torn limb from limb by their fellow crabs, and I don’t worry all that much about my karma. Everybody eats. The spices were from my memory of smelling a soft-shelled crab dinner in Pennsylvania once, oregano, thyme, bay laurel, ginger, mustard, black pepper, coriander, sage… a wonderfully rich mélange of steamy aromas and imputed flavour, a pile of crabs unceremoniously <>dumped<> straight from the drained pot into the middle of a round table for the diners to devour in haste before they cooled. The place was a dive, but the chef was a marvel. We got to talking and he offered me something to eat, so I said ‘Do you serve gnocchi with gorgonzola sauce?’ This is possibly my favourite Italian dish of all time, when it’s done well, and I somehow thought it would be.He looked at me and said, ‘It’s not on the menu, but I can do it.’ So he let me watch whilst he made them from scratch, performing that graceful dance around the stove and prep table that great chefs do, and it was wonderful, the best I’ve ever tasted.So she took a taste of my crab and nodded, “It’s really good.”I grinned like a fool, “Of course it is. I made it.” This might seem nervy, but I was very confident. I found out later her family were restaurant owners from way back, one branch founded and still runs Nepenthe down in Big Sur, and her cousin Flicka owns Pier 23 over in the City, very popular with jazz fans, but this all came out later, or I might have been a little less bold. Naah… probably not, not me.Then she tried my garlic bread.Now I’m really fond of garlic, but it has to be prepared just right, so of course I took particular care with these loaves, the garlic sautéed to crispy perfection, the buttered bread broiled until nicely browned, without a trace of black, most with a dusting of Romano but a few without, and with a non-dairy spread for the benefit of those for whom butter and cheese are problems. Hey, vegans have to eat, too.From the look on her face, which I couldn’t take my eyes away from. She liked my bread as well.“It’s really good. You’re pretty good at this.”I demurred slightly, at least through my modest acknowledgement, “Well…, from time to time I get it right. I’m Lee Anne. I volunteer here when I can.”“I’m Alison. I just moved here from South San Francisco and heard about this place, so I decided to come see, but I didn’t expect all this.”“It happens once every month or three. I was born here, but moved back from Southern California fairly recently.”“Really? What part?”“Dana Point. It’s about halfway between LA and San Diego.”“I know. I was born here too, but grew up mostly in Oceanside.”“So we were almost neighbours.”“Almost.” She smiled again.Our conversation expanded from that small beginning to encompass almost everything — bookstores we’ve known and loved, books, art — she’s an artist of some note — and we wound up standing by the counter through the meal, noshing from this and that, just talking and laughing, the world fallen away. When she left — she came by bus and needed to catch her ride back — she asked for my number. Of course I gave it to her.The next day she called me from a pay phone whilst she was waiting for a BART train, and I congratulated her on providing herself a nice excuse for hanging up if I didn’t turn out to be quite so much fun the day after, and she laughed. We made a date, then a second, and we seem to be together still, almost twelve years later.The first time we kissed, the smell of her neck and shoulder was intoxicating, a feast from which I’ve never been sated, a never-ending banquet, and on it goes.Those who don’t believe in love at first sight have, I think, never been overwhelmed by it, as inexplicably drenched with instant familiarity and love as if they’d walked out into the tumult of a hurricane — as if everything they’d ever wanted had been dumped on a table before them.Oh, and those leaves, they were carved Hawaiian hairsticks with polynesian paddle shapes. She’d just come back from there. We live in Hawai’i now.— ««-»» —<>When I look on you a moment, then I can speak no more, but my tongue falls silent, and at once a delicate flame courses beneath my skin, and with my eyes I see nothing, and my ears hum, and a wet sweat bathes me, and a trembling seizes me all over.<> — <>Sappho<><>Copyright © 2008 Lee Anne Phillips — All Rights Reserved Worldwide<>

16. Food most definitely works :)Whose translation of Sappho is that?

17. I think it may be Mary Barnard’s Sappho – A New Translation from the University of California Press but I can’t recall offhand. I write these things down in haste, without attribution, sometimes, and it’s difficult to recapture after a bit and I have most of the English translations laying about.

18. I have a handful of different translations lying about. My favourite has an orange cover, iirc, with some kind of white graphic, and I *think* it’s Barnard’s but, offhand, I can’t recall. I’ll try remember to look it up. Thanks for the reminder.

19. I don’t recognise it by description, but Barnard’s, especially, has gone through many editions since it was published, I think in the early Sixties. She was the first, or perhaps one of the first, to abandon efforts to rhyme or cast her words into English poetic forms, and has influenced everyone since.I know it’s not Willis Barnstone or Jim Powell, both fairly recent, as I looked, but can’t find Barnard or Anne Carson, the other likely candidate. Hers is called If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, and has the Greek text interleaved, which is nice, although I can just barely puzzle out modern Greek with the constant help of a bilingual dictionary, so the Aeolic Greek of Sappho is quite beyond me.I would have said that it was Greek to me but that would have been going too far, even for me.Giasou…

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