The ninety two year old and wildly alive owner of Shakespeare & Company, George Whitman, requires a one page autobiography be written by everyone who stays in his library. Below is the one I wrote. George lives in a small apartment above the store. The place is a clutter of books, newspapers and autobiographies written by the 70,000 plus others who came before me.
Hunting is a rite of passage for young men in my town. I was raised on ice fishing and skiing on the border of Canada and a large lake. It was a small town called International Falls with the unofficial expression: “if you don’t know what you’re doing, at least somebody else does.” It was there that I discovered that, although I didn’t pass deer-season weekends at a hunting shack, I was still a hunter. Fortunately, my territory was much closer to home and full of much easier prey.
I served up coffee on the weekends at the only cafe our little town claimed smack dab in the middle of our historic “downtown.” Those long winter days were spent hunting for things I consider superior even to deer. What I hunted for were stories. About people. Who they were and what they were about, and what made them that way. I was fascinated by the history that the quaintly decrepite building held not just in its own stories echoing into the tin ceiling, but also in the stories of the people who had seen it so differently.
My coming of age wasn’t when I killed my first large buck, but rather when I heard a story of the most recent local student who had studied abroad, a completely new concept for me. It had been almost ten years since International Falls had sent a student away. Upon inquiry, I happened to meet the man in charge of the local foreign exchange program who, like the majority of locals, I actually already knew from childhood. However, I never envisioned him as a man who could get me a ticket out of there!
Soon, I was on a plane to Torrevieja, Spain, to experience the Spanish culture that I could only imagine through reading. I felt more a citizen of the world after leaving and was lucky enough to be accepted to a boarding school for the arts to pursue a passion in theatre. It was a relief knowing that I would be returning to a metropolitan environment instead of a town with a ratio of 7,000 hockey sticks to zero theatre. It was there that I discovered storytelling and creating with its elements. I fell in love that year with Shakespeare, Chekhov, and a girl. It was where I discovered sex and we rehearsed it together whenever we could.
Closing that chapter on my life, I determined that there is more to my life than just experiencing the steps that many walk in without any clear direction. I decided to postpone my planned studies in New York. Two weeks from now, I will be on a plane headed to Mumbai, India to help those less fortunate than myself. Above all, I am a hunter. I am a listener, I am a teller. I know there are too many unheard voices in India and the rest of the world. These are voices that must be heard. I want to give a voice to the voiceless.
Whatever this future holds for me, I want to leave it knowing that I made it just a little better than the way I found it. Thank you, George, for doing the same. Thank you for making this world just a little bit better. Thank you for giving me a place to rest my head. Last, but definitely not least, thank you for the opportunity to tell my story.
Keep on hunting.
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