Two roads converged in a yellow wood (which meant that I COULD travel both!)

I’m talking, of course, about two influences in my childhood, funneled together by two best friends from that same childhood. (It wasn't in a yellow wood, just in my basement. But that doesn't matter.)

I hung out with Dave at his house Friday night during the Colts game. We didn’t watch much of the game (they lost to the Vikings 13-3, and Walk the Line was on), so I pulled out my laptop that I brought with me so I could work with some photos I was posting to Facebook that evening. I had forgotten to bring the photos, so I resigned myself to writing down Springboards for this very blog. (Springboards are the small capsules of thought I write down when I can’t spend the time writing them out completely. When I have the time and space, I pull a Springboard out of either my pocket or a Word-document list, and hopefully it brings me back to the frame of mind I was in when I wrote it.)

Dave asked me what I was writing. I told him at first that it was a to-do list (because it WAS a to-do list, of sorts), and he said to put on the list, “Give David a billion dollars.” I politely said, “No,” and explained that I was really writing down Springboards. He said, “Then write about giving me a billion dollars,” and some day, when that writing gets me a billion dollars, “give me half a billion.” I said, “Okay, I will.”

There, Dave, I wrote it.

Anyway, one of the Springboards was this:

Reading Bob Spitz’s Beatles biography like a Harry Potter novel (you know roughly how it will end, but the details are fascinating & the writing style is too quick to stop)

Those are the two elements of my childhood that have converged: the Beatles and Harry Potter. They hadn’t completely converged yet, though, which is one reason why I had written the idea down but not expanded on it yet. For the moment, I left it on the page and continued watching TV.

Only after mentioning the book to my friend Luke at dinner after Mass yesterday did the parallel re-enter my head. Thanks to that mention, I decided to explore it again. I put off all other things I planned to do that evening (watch the first season of House, organize my stuff for IU) until after I read some more of the book. I had stopped at the end of a chapter earlier in the day (the Quarry Men now consisted of John, Paul, George, and Colin Hanton!), so I could pick it up easily and continue reading.

I settled myself on the couch in the basement, piling three pillows against the armrest and lying across the length of what had comfortably framed my body from head to toe five years ago but which now only went down to the ankles. Eventually I turned from lying on my back to sitting, to lying on my stomach, to lying on the floor. It takes some effort to recall those movements now, because I was so enthralled with reading about finding a drummer, John & Paul’s songwriting process, and the Liverpool rock ‘n’ roll scene that I blocked out everything else. The other things I could do, the more comfortable places I could sit, even the stomach rumblings from the Mexican restaurant could not pull me away from the trance I was in, scanning my eyes back & forth across the page like a copy machine and mouthing the more revelatory passages. Sometimes, I even forgot where I was and I read passages out loud, although I don’t think anyone heard because I was in the basement. I felt like I was eight again, when I absorbed those tracks from the Anthology CDs over and over, when I discovered what a truly awesome sound the Beatles created at the expense of hearing any other sounds from any other bands of the day.

And then I realized, “This is exactly how I felt reading The Half-Blood Prince.” In that instance, I ignored the need to apply for scholarships as I raced through its pages during Christmas break of my senior year of high school. (I was late in reading the summer release, I admit, but I caught up quickly. I read it in two days!) I brought that book to the dinner table, to the bathroom, on errands with Mom, and to bed, all of which (besides the errands, because I’m driving now) I have done with the Beatles biography. The cliffhangers, the fast pace, and the characters of each book all have the same rapturous appeal to me, and they all result in lost time, both then and now.

It’s not really lost time, though. Like any good book, it’s just time spent differently.

God, I haven’t been this excited about reading a book for a long time. Of course, I’ve read gems recently (The Things They Carried, The Godfather, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), but not since growing up at the same pace as Harry Potter have I wanted to devour a book so quickly. Of course, I’ll probably end up with the same problem I had with those books: asking myself, “Why did I read that so quickly? I didn’t stop to savor it!” But that’s okay; satisfaction, wholeness, and a sense of accomplishment are meant only for the end of philosophy and theology books, anyway.

There’s no time to harp, though. I’m only on page 160 of 858!