Saturday, July 26, 2008


sunhat
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I was stirring red sauce earlier, adding coffee and a little dark chocolate while it simmered, and this popped into my head. Question to ask -- Who would I be if I had never read a book?
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Would I be the little child I remember early on, exuberant, creative, curious. Would I still hold that kind of heart?
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Would I be a person inventing a new language? A person finding a quiet rapture with nature?
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How would the essence of you be different—more intensified like a sauce reduced of extra content? Or limp, lifeless? Troubled?
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Every day of a life this question has an answer—unique and probably un-sayable (because we can’t go back and know; can we?)
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I used to have a book about a man who went into the woods and lived silently for a huge amount of years, maybe ten years. He said, by doing this he found the silence between the words, and I never forgot it; he said he found Spirit living there in the silence. Even now I can see his face—a mystic he became; his eyes a bit ravaged with inner light; his whole being open to the inner harmonics of the soul’s music; creation’s music.

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secretly i have always wanted a "geiger counter"
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Fractals of dreaming Sheep from Quark --fascinated me, especially the language used.
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Boz Scaggs (for Jimmy)
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Peace to all who enter here, and link to Tumbleword's origin
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: _) Smiling is the new yoga; laughing, too.
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12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Inventing a new language? Yes, that is just what I think you would be doing.

As always, much to mull over... visits here are always rewarding.

Enjoy!

g

Summer Nicklasson said...

A life without books is difficult to imagine. It would leave us without history, rich descriptions, unseen landscapes. Television can always taint our perceptions, but books have a magical way of ever so slowly unraveling the pages of a mystery, allowing your brain to slowly unwrap and open to the new experience.

I've read books about people going into the woods, separating oneself from people. One time I even spent a week in the woods alone. I loved it. I was calm. The only thing I had to do was walk and survive. It was a strange peace to be so separate from the world and all of its dangling carrots.

But for the joys of solitude, there is an unsurmountable richness in being in relationship with others. In relationships I am given the context I need to define myself, to notice how I react when confronted with different forms of dialogue and experience.

I think solitude is a special, important experience, but (for me anyway), being amongst people is equally important.

I guess it's all about balance.

Nice post today.

Esti said...

I think I'm still the same kid I was, with lots of layers on top, but just very much the same. books haven't changed my true nature, I think. But I've enjoyed life more through them.
Have a nice week.
:)

Mary-Laure said...

Who would I be if I had never read a book?...
What a great question. I need books to breathe and live. It's so great to have parents who make you read when you're little.

Gwen Buchanan said...

you would be instinctual,imaginative, inventive and pure.

Marjojo said...

Hey, I like your definition of yoga, you got me practising right away! Almost impossible to imagine a life without books, better one without TV which sucks thoughts and questions from me before they find shape.

Seth said...

Interesting idea to contemplate and beautiful image to inspire.

Disa said...

i remember reading a book on hollywood horror film make-up and not being able to fall asleep. i also remember reading a story about an enchanted tree which had a slippery slide you rode giant pillows down the middle, that was inhabited by a deaf pixie who wore pots and pans, a fairy, and a gnome called "mr whathisname". each week, there was a new land at the top of the tree- the land of surprises, the land of dame slap, the land of enchantment....

nice :)

Anonymous said...

My mother filled our home with books when I was growing up. Without books I would be a lost child. My mother gave me words.

Anonymous said...

Very interesting post....

I certainly wouldn't be so creative if i didn't read books... I wouldn't write so much poetry if I didn't read books...

mansuetude said...

Thank YOU ALL for your comments. I am still thinking about this--that books are a wealth and also that some people have found their own inner wealth and become uniquely expressive without much book literacy. I hope to revisit the idea in a post again.

Erin Curry said...

hmm. Books give us a way to use the self we are inside, we unfold and spread our thoughts about the globe, knowing characters and uses of things we have never seen.

My life has been shaped by books so much, when I was 7 or so I fell in love with horses reading the Black Stallion series, I rode for 10 years. When I was 9 I understood Sam when he left for the woods in My Side of the Mountain, I saw that it COULD be done, this thing my little heart ached for, to be self reliant, something search for daily. Today I read them to learn about dyes and plant uses I have no other teacher for.

Life is good, but life with books lets me know the smallness of myself, and the potential.