User Profile

Today is a Sunday. On Saturday, I read Nevada. Tomorrow I have some major surgery. I'm still reeling from Nevada, and maybe that's bad timing on my part.

It feels cliché to type, but I felt seen in the pages of Nevada. Not a good, glorious and joyous seen; but an uncomfortable seen- a doctor poking at an open wound "seen". A butterfly pinned to a velvet board.

I count myself lucky that I don't get too emotional thinking about "what if"- I've made a lot of mistakes, big and small, suffered misfortunes (mostly small), there's a lot of what-if fodder in my life.

That's maybe why I can set it all aside- if it was one big what-if, I might dwell more, after all.

Then, through a certain lens, there is a single big what-if, and Nevada is an acutely painful and compelling rendition of that lens.

It was published in 2013, which is ten years ago this year.

What if I'd read this book 10 years ago? Only the smallest tweak is needed to imagine it happening. 10 years ago I still walked into bookstores and picked out something interesting based on cover design.

Perhaps the saving grace is that ten years ago was still far enough along in my life that I'd still be angst-ridden over the same question.

Nevada reads like the road map that my life might/would have followed if I'd read it ten years ago, aside from I'd be impossibly pining even then, "what if I had read this ten years ago?"

The book itself, ironically, paradoxically, answers that question. This fact doesn't make me feel less exposed.

It's a really weird thing to read a book and have all the characters be you, every possible Schrödinger wish fulfillment alternate reality version of you.

Being Seen(tm) doesn't feel great, but it feels a lot, and immensely, and there's definitely something good in that.