Monthly Archives: March 2010

Without A Book

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I love to read and I am, without question, a bibliophile. 

The first time I heard I was a bibliophile (a collector of books) it sounded like something that required a hefty dose of antibiotics (do they make pro-biotics? ).  Anyway, a world without books would be like a world without sunlight. Nearly as bad is the time between books. If you find an author you love you can gobble up their books one after another. I am, for example, overjoyed to hear Howard Frank Mosher has a new book out, “Walking to Gatlinburg” . I love his writing.

I am pages away from finishing “Elmer Gantry” by Sinclair Lewis, my sixth Lewis book in a row, so I’m up for a change.

Being without a book is to feel a bit rudderless in the world. There is an almost familial comfort to know you have a book to return to as you go through the rest of life. A place to retreat, meet friends, places, experiences to be had that, while you are in the process of having them, belong solely to you.

Anyway, I’d like to talk more but I need to finish Gantry, then find another book to welcome me.

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Write the Words

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You write the words in front of you, just as they are. If truth be your guide and courage your light, it is your only choice. You write the words in front of you and hope they reach the page before the influence of media, hunger, agendas, wounds of history, stain them. Sometimes you will not know if this has happened for some time. Sometimes you will never know.

You write the words in front of you, the ones that stand before your heart and soul, the ones you know wear your realities. Set them down, straight, true, clear. There are times their at-first meaning will lift like a mist and their core meaning will appear. I am back to fearless (I think). Reality, the experience of it, the exposing of it in all its ineffable shapes, tones, rhythms, sounds, movements, mores, tricks, blemishes, heartbeats, lives and deaths, relationships, lands and cultures, are the aim of your pen.

You write the words. Write, retreat, write again. You cannot – though like me, you likely will, at least at times – worry over what others will think. Have your worry, but give it no say. Write the words, write them anyway.

Live.

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