Dear Reader,
Aimée Lutkin, today's guest author, is a writer, director, and performer from NYC, where she was born and raised. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles, but will travel for almost any reason.
Aimée's first book is The Lonely Hunter. When can we say we'll be single forever--and that's okay? One woman questions our society's pathologizing of loneliness in this crackling, incisive blend of memoir and cultural reporting.
At the end of today's column find out how to enter Aimée's book giveaway. Five copies of The Lonely Hunter are waiting for five lucky book club readers
Please welcome author Aimée Lutkin...
The people I envy most in this world for their natural abilities are those who sleep well. I wake every morning at around dawn. Being an early riser is not a moral virtue. In my case. It's an involuntary state of consciousness I'd love to trade in for the capacity to sleep anywhere, anytime, and wake up refreshed. Not only does it take me a long time to fall asleep, I toss and turn all night. When I dream, it's so vivid it's more like I'm living a second shift, going from our world to some other dimension to be awake there for a while.
It's a bit on the nose, but when the pandemic first started, I dreamt constantly of traveling. Confined to my apartment and immediate neighborhood during the day, at night I traveled on planes, giant ocean cruisers, trains, even a ski lift from town to town. Rarely did I reach any destination--as it often is with actual travel, my dream journeys were a headache of missed connections and wrong stops. It was still exciting just to move, even if I was only moving across an inner landscape of subconscious desires.
I think the instigating force of all this was mainly regret; in late 2019, I'd canceled a planned trip to Europe. Then, I'd decided that the trip would mean financial ruin and I should wait for a more auspicious time. A part of my decision also had to do with being single. Traveling seemed like something I should only be doing if I could do it with another person. I didn't trust myself to be good enough company.
Now, having been single for a little over a decade, I try to approach life as though there may not be a more auspicious time than right this moment and I'm my favorite companion. Last fall, shortly before a new variant sent me scuttling back to isolation, I managed to travel during my waking hours. I visited Paris for three weeks. I hadn't flown across the ocean in about 18 years, not since returning from a semester abroad in that same city during college. I couldn't wait another second.
Being a tourist can be extremely cliche. There were a lot of picturesque moments in my trip, a lot of sitting in outdoor cafes and drinking very inexpensive wine and walking along the Seine. It also involved a lot of working remotely at weird hours, having to find an emergency dentist on a Sunday, and my first flat tire ever somewhere off the highway near Rouen. Like my dreams, the experience was sometimes more of a nightmare than a fantasy. But the adventure did something for me that I thought was impossible: it tired me out. I slept like a baby every night and I don't remember what I dreamed about at all.
I'd love to hear more about your dreams and adventures at aimeelutkin@gmail.com, email me and you'll be entered in my drawing for one of five copies of The Lonely Hunter.
-- Aimée Lutkin
aimeelutkin@gmail.com
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
AUTHORBUZZ: Discover new books, "meet" the authors and enter to win.
THE RHYTHM METHOD: A Stage Dive Novella (FICTION) by Kylie Scott
It's been a while now since Lick introduced the rock band Stage Dive to us. After that tumultuous night in Las Vegas, Evelyn Thomas and David Ferris have been happily married for years. They don't want anything to alter their prefect lives. But change in the form of a surprise pregnancy shakes them to their foundations. Can the king and queen of the rock n roll scene rise to the challenge?
I'm giving away five copies, to enter the drawing, click on the link to Authorbuzz and the book jacket or email: 1001DarkNights@gmail.com
Go to: AUTHORBUZZ click on THE RHYTHM METHOD to read more and to email author Kylie Scott, you'll get a reply.
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