0 W. a a 0 S I edesa, anay 3,203//Th taemn We were just present by Aaron Guggenheim paige's pages: the books that bind by paige pearcy write for the statement Have you had an interesting experience? Story you want to share with the world? Then The Statement wants you to write a personal statement. A personal statement is a 1,000-word first person essay about anything. Check out this week's personal statement on page seven, and e-mail hsgold@umich.edu if you're interested. online comments ann arbor affairs: old testament "I love this! It's very funny and well-written.." - USER: Alyssa Books are perhaps my best rela- tionship. They're always there and they're always interesting, new, exciting, romantic and emotional. Television bores me, movies are short-lived, but books ... they stick with you. And yet, how often do you read? It's hard to find time, right? But-what if you read just 20 pages a day? Give up a few minutes ... cough ... hours ... on Facebook and pick up one of those paper-filled thought- makers. I promise, it's the cheapest and most effective anti-depeessant you'll find. You don't have to believe that just because my name is the same word as those that fill my favorite objects that - I have any authority to deem a book wor- thy or not worthy. But, I am an English major, if that credits me at all. I'm going to tell you what I think, and I hope you decide to pick one a of these books up and see what it does for you. I figured that over the holiday break I'd be able to fit insome light reading before hauling the novels for my English classes across cam- pus this semester. With the piles of snow outside, freezing tempera- tures and the thought of having to see someone I knew anytime I stepped outside of my house (Hi, neighbors!), reading would be the obvious wayto avoid all of it. Much to my - and the better majority of the West side of the Mitten State's - dismay, the snow was non-existent, the temperatures were fairly mild and I'm really not sures to read. Yet, there I found myself. Awkwardly hunched over my books in a blanket that made me overheat rather than fend awaythe cold and reading. Must be the book- worm in me. This winter break I came home ready to start one book in particular - Zadie Smith's "White Teeth.' But I was quickly distracted from that book by other reading suggestions from my mother that had time lim- its: "Going to see the movie tomor- row ... must ... finish." Thus, I put the Smith book aside. I started with "The Perks of Being A Wallflower." Yes, boo me all you want for not having read this when I was a child, but I was far more occupied with "Harry Potter" and "The Princess Diaries" (shun) to give even a nod to this book. The main character, Charlie, is embodied in the words of Perks. The style is different - disjointed - and so is he. The stream of con- sciousness is raw and colloquial - a nice change of pace from those books that require more reading between the lines than actual read- he thinks and feels point-blank. . Next was Joan Didion's "Play It As It Lays" - simply put, I am obsessed with the female author. Her prose is succinct and blunt and she sugarcoats nothing - shit hap- pens and she wants you to know it. But "Play It As It Lays" wasn't really a holiday-happy-feeling book, unless you think drug abuse and depression are equivocal to cookies and, uh, kittens. If you like Didion, "Plav It As It Lays" is noteworthy to read merely to contrast her writ- ing before and after J those tragic events detailed in her recent works. When 4 a.m. rolled around the next day, I realized as Icompleted Maria Semple's - "Where'd You Go a' Bernadette" that my sleeping pat- tern was unpre- dictable. But it's not my fault! The words on the pages really just flew off! "Where'd You Go Bernadette" holds a well-deserved place on many of the Best of 2012 book lists. The reason: it's hilari- ous. The worst description, because "hilarious" is overused and vague (my English professors would not be proud) but there's something . to be said for ambiguity. It's filled with snarky humor and jabs at over- involved mothers that we all feel are too familiar. And with that my break began to come to an end. I started to wander down the road of "Downton Abbey" and soon Zadie Smith's book had yet to be completed. I was flustered, but then I remembered there's Pp A o [LLUSTRATION BY MEGAN MULHOLLAND "When I was at Michigan (LS&A '87),I was supposed to like Jewish boys, too (My name is Sarah Siegel), but preferred Jewish girls. The heart wants who it-wants. All's well that ends well; just ask my Jewish wife. Why not become a writer on Jon Stewart's show and see where it goes?" - FACEBOOK USER: Sarah Siegel that anti-social, removing the pres- ing, because Charlie says everything always another book column. stood on one foot in my boxers in a frigid river, attempting to wash away the thick layer of dirt that had turned me an off- shade of brown. And as I stood there - soaked in that heart-rending beauty that comes from encountering profound silence in the wilder- ness - I realized something both profound and troubling: We had absolutely no idea what we were doing. Some context, of course, is necessary. Ethan, Paul and I met while running cross- country in high school and, over the years, became fierce devotees to-running workouts and races that left us mumbling incoherently at the end of them. At the end of high school, we decided to hike the John Muir Trail - 210 miles of pristine wilderness that led up to Mount Whitney - with my twin brother Jacob. We left Paul, far more athletically gifted than Ethan, Jacob or I, in charge of the planning. "The first day is going to be fun," Paul said with a small smile as we packed 35 pounds of food, water and clothing into our back- packs while huddled around a picnic table in Yosemite Valley. Paul often thought the words "incredibly challenging" and "fun" were interchangeable. - . I wasn't particularly worried about the have fucking Toblerone," I said exuberantly as hike. We had bigger issues to carry along with we were cleaning pots after dinner. us on the trail. Paul and I were involved in We awoke the next morning to frost and dysfunctional relationships that - as only an damp sleepingbags.We dried our bags, packed 18-year-old could readily believe - seemed to camp and left. By lunch, however, Jacob blew hover in the same sphere of importance as life out his knees and exited at Tuolumne Mead- or death. But our concerns were meaningless ows for home. when compared with Ethan. His father had After Jacob left, we picked up the pace of been slowly wasting away as a result ofecancer. the hike. We were three 18-year-old boys lost Ethan carried a satellite phone with him that in our definition of masculinity, forcefully was ready to tug him back to reality if the cir- competing to get to the top of that next moun- cumstances called for it. tain summit a few minutes faster, or hike On the first day, we hiked morethan17 miles those next three miles in under hour. We all and 7,000 feet of vertical elevation, passing by wanted to get there - even if we didn't know day hikers who slung fancy cameras around exactly where we were heading. their necks like trophies. That night, all of us Along the trail, in the grandeur of moun- except Paul were too sore and tired to bother tains, trees and streams that made everything moving, so we camped in a mosquito-infested seem less pressing, our conversations often campsite. We watched another couple run off circled back to Ethan's dad. Paul andI had told into woods away from the mosquitoes, over- Ethan that anytime he wanted to talk about it, whelmed bythe ferocity of the swarm. he just had to say the word. We talked about But we had chocolate and GORP, a trail Ethan's dad sparingly but, to be honest, we mix appropriately nicknamed "amazing" for didn't know what to say. the sheer quantity of caloric goodness that On the third day of hiking, after camping we could hold in each handful. Our giddiness atop a rock that overlooked the river, my knees about all the chocolate we had carried out into blew out. We set up camp for the night and in the woods kept us happy. the morning, with the help of Ethan and Paul, "Do you.see this? Wehave Toblerone. WL Lmade myway out to a road leading to a ski resort. We reached the ski resort and called my brother, who made the six-hour drive out to come get me. "Wow. That's all I'm going to say. Wow," Jacob had said over the phone before making the drive on down. By the end, we had hiked more than 70 miles over four days, walking from sun up to sun down with little rest. Jacob and I were both left limping for the next couple of weeks. Ethan's dad was in worse condition than when we had left. But we didn't fight with each other during the trip. When everything was going wrong, we became closer. It came down to the fact that we were just present. Despite the fact that we didn't know what to say or how to say it, we were there. The morning after Ethan's dad passed away, . Ethan texted me and asked me if I wanted to go for a run. When I metwith him, I gave him a hug and asked him the obligatory stupid question, "You doing alright?" As we began running out toward the trails, Ethan looked at me and we started talking about airplanes. Aaron Guggenheim is an LSA junior and a DailyNewsReporter.