Get your own
 diary at DiaryLand.com! contact me older entries newest entry

10:14 a.m. - June 05, 2002
On reading and persecution
My mother taught me to read early from a series of Disney books with titles like "Ali Baba and the Secret Cave" featuring Mickey as Ali and "Button Stew" with Daisy Duck and "The Three Little Pigs" featuring The Three Little Pigs. In my room these books stretched along an entire wall on the bookshelf my father made, mostly pastel colored bindings with the occasional red and dark green (is that teal?). After learning to read from these books I moved on to the longer stories, again Disney, in anthologies with few illustrations and then the newspaper and onto the books I've read ever since. There are times I feel cheated of some essential input from Dr. Seuss or Dick and Jane or whatever else comes along with mother's milk (wait: I'm unsure of when Dr. Seuss comes along; pre or post weaning? I'll check on that.).

Thinking about this because last night my father stopped by with a large box with all those books in it, saying he had come across them while going through storage. I don't know what I'll do with all of them--probably put them back into the box and into storage--but I was comfortably nostalgic looking through them and remembering how easy it was to read and the hours I spent making my way through stacks of books.

I have difficulty understanding people who aren't readers, wondering what they do with their time and how flat their existence must be, my assumption predicated, of course, on the basis of my own existence being fulfilling and cause to proselytize. Sarcasm, that. Read less and live more--what a novel idea. Jesus, won't the cliches leave me alone?

I'm persecuted by cliches and similes and poor metaphors and tired turns of phrases. Persecuted. At my rate of descent it probably won't be long before I'll be afraid to read, anxious that the words will fly up and beat me. Damn. I need to quit. What a relief to know I'm not crazy.

 

previous - next

 

about me - read my profile! read other Diar
yLand diaries! recommend my diary to a friend! Get
 your own fun + free diary at DiaryLand.com!