Thursday, July 16, 2009
Who Knew?
When I was younger, I read all the time. I read books that many people didn’t read until later in life. (I know that sounds so fucking snotty but it’s not meant that way. All it means is that I read a LOT and would be given suggestions by the school librarian as well as my mother and the city librarian.) I couldn’t wait to get home to read. I was on the summer program of the local library and always surpassed the list. When we would travel, my mother would hand me a book that she brought with her to keep me calm; something that she knew I would like. (I’ll never forget when I was 14, on a plane, being annoyed as hell by the sounds of some people’s voices as they were talking....like, really, really annoyed--so annoyed I couldn’t hide the fact--which we have all discovered why now from a post I wrote not too long ago, and she whipped out a copy of, “Where The Red Fern Grows” from her purse. Instantly I was in another world and did not hear those annoying voices anymore. I read that book throughout the entire vacation.)
She was a teacher, my mother figure, and she always encouraged us to read. It was one of the things she got right. She made reading a pleasurable activity. You could never go wrong if you were reading. A book was never taken away as punishment, (that was reserved for t.v. and phone and stereo). If you wanted to go get a book, there was no excuse as to why you couldn’t, (like the excuses given if you wanted to go to the movies or hang out with friends.) Reading was the one thing I could do and have peace not only from her but also by transporting myself out of my shitty little world and into another.
So, as I said, I read. A lot. A lot, a lot. No, I mean, A. LOT!
Then? I became an adult. And suddenly, things like germs became a major issue for me. I never did like germs but suddenly it was a bigger problem. I guess I started to see just how nasty some people could be, now that I was out in the real world and not ensconced under a rock anymore. The public library was now out. As most young people do, I struggled, financially, through college and my first working years so wasn’t always able to afford books. I would always manage to find a way to get the latest Stephen King book but that was about it. Of course I had the books I had to buy for my American Literature course in college but that was all paid off with my GI Bill and Pell Grant. It didn’t mean I could afford to go out and buy anything extra.
In time, I joined a book club for the sole purpose of getting 11 books for a penny. Brilliant! Problem solved! I would only have to buy 4 more in the next x amount of years. That was something I could actually afford to do. And as soon as those years were up, I got out of the book club because the shipping costs made the book so much more expensive than if I just went to the store.
Eventually it got to the point that I was only buying about 5-10 books a year. This is a significant difference in the amount of reading I did when I was younger. Although I read fast and could have easily sailed through about 3 books a week, I learned, in time, that I was always disappointed when a book ended. I wanted it to last longer. So I taught myself to slow down my reading when I was doing it for pleasure. I would then read about a book a week. Fifty two books a year is not bad for a 9, 10, 11, 12 year old on up. And again, I’m not talking about Beezus books or any other type of YA book, I’m talking about, “Catcher in the Rye” and George Orwell books, Anna Keranina, Silas Marner, (why didn’t anyone like that? I loved Silas Marner!), Catch-22, etc.
Anyway, as I said, once adulthood came around, reading dropped off. I went about my life of trying to make something of myself and meeting all sorts of people and it would floor me, absolutely floor me when people said things like, “I don’t like to read.” WHA?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!? Someone get me a chair, I’m about to faint.
OR, I would come across those fake ass types who said they read a book and would try to use it in their “debate” with me. Idiots. I read that fucking thing when I was 10 years old, I KNOW that book. And it became evident that these types of pricks were either regurgitating Cliff’s Notes or whatever their friends told them about it; the books their friends hadn’t read either! Do you know how many times I’ve been called a bitch and have had people get royally pissed off at me because they could not fight me in a battle about a book? Almost as many times as the number of books I’ve read. People really don’t like it when you call their shit. Fuck ‘em.
As time went on, the years passed, I was reading fewer and fewer books. In fact, in the past two years, I think I’ve read 4 books total. That is appalling.
Then, I heard about the Kindle. I was reading sarahk’s website and she mentioned it. I went to look at it. I thought about it. I looked at it again. Lather, rinse, repeat 10, 20, oh hell, 78 times. I really didn’t think I was going to like this thing. I thought it might be ok but how could you replace the feel of a book? The smell? Oh the glorious smell of a book! How can that be replaced? The sound of the spine cracking when you first open the book. God how I love that sound. Flipping the pages, over and over and over again to relish all the glorious length of the book. What might be inside? Look at all of those words....the places we will go! The anticipation! There just could not be a way to replace that!
Well, it doesn’t replace the feel and the smell and the flipping of the pages. There is no crack when you open it, (better fricken not be!) But, it does do something better than the regular books do. It heightens the anticipation.
See, I’ve had this for about a month now and I have 83 books already. That is not a typo. I said 83. Some were on sale, some were free, some were from indie authors, some were full price but, there are 83 wonderful new lands to explore, new people to meet and new situations to get in to. And it took about 60 seconds a book to arrive from the time I thought about getting it to the time I got it.
I have found myself immersed in to the world of books again. I’ve been reading like I did when I was younger. I have realized that I have severely missed reading all these years. I think perhaps some of those years would have been a lot calmer had I not basically given up on reading. Some people need drugs, some need alcohol....I, apparently, needed books. I now have them again. And I have been much happier.
Perhaps this sounds weird but it’s actually boosting up my self confidence again. I’m back to the old me who didn’t give two hornet’s asses what anyone thought of me. I stand up to people more and do not tolerate rudeness as I was. (I have never completely lost that part of me but even with all you have read here over the past 5-6 years it’s nothing like I used to be.) I have found once again that it’s really easy to figure out who is worthy of my affections and who isn’t. I just can’t be around someone who is an idiot and it’s really easy to spot them again. Idiots don’t like to read. And it’s extremely apparent in the way they act and speak. It’s easy to spot who is lazy. It’s easy to spot those with little to no self esteem. It’s easy to spot problem people.
No, I’m not reading self help books. What I’m trying to say, (badly), is that the creative part of my brain is opening up again and that part of the brain is what helps me make the right choices and keeps me away from bad things. When that part of my brain is alert and well used, I see things FAR more clearly than I typically do. YES, it can be easy to spot an idiot from a mile away but I’m not talking about “those” idiots. I’m talking about the idiots who aren’t always easy to see. Does anyone know what the hell I mean here? There are two kinds of idiots. The obvious and the not so obvious.
Whatever.
The point of all of this is, it’s like Spring in my mind again. I was told that I would love my Kindle. I was skeptical. As if I would name an inanimate object, c’mon sarahk....but she was right. I do love it because of what it has brought back to me. It has brought back peace and awareness and creativity....a part of my life that was sitting in the dark for far too long.
And, I’m not sure, but this blog may be taking a new direction soon. I will still probably write my opinions about some things but I am finding that I no longer need this for the reasons I started it. To get attention. (Isn’t that why anyone blogs?) I wanted to share my opinion, I wanted someone to fucking listen to me, damnit, everyone like to interrupt me and this was the place that wouldn’t happen, I wanted to hear from others what they thought and hey, maybe meet a few people along the way. In a nutshell: attention.
Now? I think I’ll get back to some of the way I used to write. Instead of just saying what happened, tell a story about what happened. I have had the trauma of sitting near someone when they read a blog entry or two of mine. I don’t like that kind of horror. I fidget and wonder if they’re having a good time reading. What are they thinking? Why did they laugh right there? What did they read that made them laugh? Why didn’t they laugh more? Are they really READING or are they skimming? UGH! (If you have a blog, don’t do this to yourself.) Anyway, the people who have done that as well as people who have read when I’m not around have told me what their favorite entries are.
Turns out, the entries the people like the most are when I’m telling a story. Telling the story, not just typing what happened, actually telling a story. Granted these were actual events that happened but it was the way I was putting it out there, the actual story telling that they enjoyed so much. (I can think of a handful of them off the top of my head.) Some of them have liked them so much they passed them around to their office mates.
Blogging or writing a journal, the main rule is: Write what you know. The few instances I did write what I knew, the post was a big hit. So that is what I want to go back to: writing what I know. And what I know are my personal experiences and what I know is how to tell a story. I don’t know why I’ve been too chicken shit to do it more often because when I do that, it’s well liked.
This does mean, of course, that entries will probably be farther and fewer between. As exciting as my life may sound, I just don’t have too many conflicts or confrontations happen to me that I can turn in to a story. Most of the stuff that happens to me is the same as what happens to everyone else: shitty crying kid at Target and the oblivious bitch mother who doesn’t care about anyone around her having to endure all that screaming, assholes in traffic, assholes at work, assholes at the store, assholes in the airport....it’s easy to share that. Very easy. It takes no effort at all to bang out a couple of paragraphs about all the pricks we encounter every day.
What does take work, effort and creativity, is turning an incident in to a good story. Kid screaming in the middle of Target is not a story. Going through the hassle of getting a towing sign up on your property so the twits who keep parking in your driveway finally get theirs....that’s a story. And that’s what I want to do again.
So, my readership may change again.
And I don’t know if I’ll talk about politics much on this blog anymore. Two reasons: this country has already fucked itself for the next four years and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about that so what is the point in bitching about it to the choir? And, to be honest, since I got my Kindle, I have turned my t.v. on once.
I don’t have the slightest idea what is going on the world today. And I really don’t give a shit, either.
