We’re honored to be able to post this guest blog from a local author and long-time friend of Bookshop, Patrice Vecchione–especially since it’s about us! You can check out her blog, Jacks Peak Journal, at http://patricevecchione.blogspot.com/
It went like this: A locals’ show on KUSP Radio, First Person Singular, recorded an excerpt from my Jacks Peak writing. The piece was about the art of listening. It aired a few weeks ago, and Clytia, who I’ve have known nearly forever, though not well, heard it, which, not surprisingly, considering she’s a reader who works at Bookshop Santa Cruz, made her think of something she’d read.
When I walked into Bookshop a few days later, she stopped me, slipping a book into my hands and, can you believe it, she’d opened up to the very section my essay had reminded her of?
Rose in a Storm, by Jon Katz, is the book. Clytia didn’t love the novel but she absolutely loved some of the writing. It’s, in part, a story about how a dog, Rose, knows the world. “She lifted her nose to the flood of smells that was the world… Earlier, she had caught the scent of snow on the wind, and ice, and then deer, then the old wild dog that ran through the woods, then eggs in a nest… and the dead and frozen petals of flowers…”
Thanks, Clytia! This is what I want from writing, from my writing, to shorten the distances between us, to bring the world—all its nuanced, complicated, blue-green, war-torn, tear-ravaged, innocent and sullied, laughter-promising self—close.
Patrice Veccchione is the author of a book of poems, Territory of Wind, a nonfiction book, Writing and the Spiritual Life, the editor of many anthologies, and the author, most recently, of a chapbook about walking in the woods, A Walk in the Park. She teaches writing and collage. www.patricevecchione.com.
