Hello (again) Hankerings

The book is torn, taped, and yellowed.
There are phone numbers for Ally, Dorothy, and Le Blanc scribbled in blue inked cursive on the cover.
A brown water stain occupies all upper corners of the pages within. A coffee mishap? While at a cafe the owner hastily rising and knocking over a cup of coffee onto the book and journal strewn table? Or was the novel shoved into an overstuffed bookbag, a leaky thermos of tea slowly seeping into vulnerable pages in the confines of fabric? Or was it simply time and dampness, a drip from a roof onto the bookshelf, a spray of raindrops from a shaken umbrella?
There are dogeared pages and creases in the spine. Above "Other books by J.D. Salinger" on the first page a faint penciled "1.50" reveals its used-book-store past.

There is a bobbypin holding together pages 169 through 198. I didn't even notice it when I picked the book off the shelf in my old room or as I read the first chapter, "Franny." As I got to "Zooey" my fingers stumbled upon that remnant of my high school self. Had that bobbypin held my hair as I stood under lights ("Romeo, doff thy name; And for that name, which is no part of thee, Take all myself!"), or pirouetted within a knotted bun in a ballet class, or given me that 40s Swing Kids look I so strove for with my knee length wool skirts and cardigans?

On page 198 someone says:
"You can say the Jesus Prayer from now till doomsday, if you don't realize that the only thing that counts in religious life is detachment, I don't see how you'll ever even move an inch. Detachment, buddy, and only detachment. Desirelessness. 'Cessation from all hankering.' It's this business of desiring if you want to know the goddam truth, that makes an actor in the first place. Why're you making me tell you things you already know? Somewhere along the line- in one damn incarnation or another, if you like- you not only had a hankering to be an actor or an actress but to be a good one. You're stuck with it now. You can't just walk out on the results of your own hankerings."

When I was 18 and went off to theater school, I knew my passion, my desire would take me places. I knew I had to go to New York, had to act. When I got there I dove into acting and voice and speech and movement classes and relished rehearsing in basement rooms with radiators like damp train whistles and having friends who got "Fosse Hands!" jokes.
I basked in the drama of it all.

When I dropped out of college with disillusionment and returned a year later with a more humble gratitude, I wasn't sure if theater was my path. I dove back in with an appreciation for the communication skills I was learning. I took as many non-theater and edgy experimental theater courses as I could. I started letting people read my writing.
At the end of college, I wanted to travel again. And I continued to fill journals with scribbled words.

In small painted letters the excerpt remained on the back of my door until my mom remodeled my old room. I considered keeping the door in the shed instead of letting her paint over the dozens of quotes and pictures defining my early adulthood.
I took a picture of flaking acrylic and ripped newspaper clippings and let her repaint.

To me, this whole "business of desiring" that led me into acting in effect led me to traveling, exploring, sailing, writing. Even farming. Desiring to feel the spectrum of emotions, to stave off boredom and stimulate those stagnating braincells, to experience the same adrenaline as walking onto stage but now walking onto a teak deck ready for passage or setting my fingers on the keyboard and wondering what will come out.

This excerpt is lower down on the page but I didn't include it on my door way back then:
"You'd better get busy, though, buddy. The goddam sands run out on you every time you turn around. I know what I'm talking about. You're lucky if you get time to sneeze in the goddam phenomenal world."

I haven't finished the book yet. I have no recollection of how the story transpires. I remember connecting with it in high school as I dreamed about New York. I wonder if my mid-thirties self will have the same reaction. I mean, I still dream about New York but the yearnings are more for the memories than possibilities. The past instead of the future. For my friends who still live there. For the smell of the harbor (I know, gross, but powerfully nostalgic). For the taste of a proper Manhattan or a dumpling or a knish. For the feeling of impending Autumn on a September day. Memories, friends, feelings that I never knew I would make, meet, have when I first turned the yellowing pages of "Franny and Zooey" as a angsty dramatic 17 year old in San Diego.

The hankerings are there and more powerful than ever. To be an actor? No. But to express, feel, be before that sand runs out and I don't get a chance to sneeze- again and again and again!