Last week's post was a bit of a downer. However, completing it when I did (early in the afternoon, instead of late at night) was a small, but sharp strike against my procrastination. In addition, getting it out of my head, onto a page (albeit, a digital one) pinned down my self-doubt. Finally, discovering a beautiful image within minutes of searching, was a simple act that snapped me out of my self-loathing.
This week's post should read a little lighter. And probably shorter*. After all, I still have a lot on my mind.
* [Future Me: "Sorry, it ain't shorter... and it may not be darker, but it sure is denser."]
(I love facial expressions. Especially subtle, but noticeable ones. And I love paintings of people reading--I know I have already posted this one by Edward Hopper, or this one by Jean-Honoré Fragonard. So, when I Googled "famous illustrations of someone reading" the one below jumped out at me. It was hidden in a themed Twitter feed. There were quite a few other fascinating ones in there. Seriously, I may have to try reading in the nude.
Whatever this young lady is reading, she sure finds it intriguing.)
When I was a child, I loved to read. It was a means to learn, a way to escape, and a form of entertainment (one that was anything but passive). In the third grade, my teacher had boxes full of cardstock sheets: on one side was a story, or an article; on the other, ten reading comprehensive questions. Like a insatiable carnivore, I consumed them during my free time. And enjoyed every minute of it. During that time, I distinctly remember an article about the ozone layer, and a chilling science fiction short story about a driving test ("The Test" by Theodore Thomas). In terms of excitement, trips to the library were the equivalent of birthday outings to a toy store. In both cases, the journey home was a lesson in patience: unwilling to disturb the tall pile of books, I would put off examining them until I had the room to spread them out. Just like a Lego set, or model plane. The treasure hoard would be a mixture of hobby magazines, do-it-yourself craft books, works of fiction, and visual encyclopedias. While bookstore excursions were rare, they always involved a long half hour of touring the stacks, with a mind deep in deliberations of what to purchase with my limited budget (to this day, they are both rare and arduous experiences).
I carried this passion well through high school. Though, I have to confess, I never treated the assigned reading from my English teachers with the same enthusiasm. I rarely finished the books. However, I eagerly devoured the suggested material that my ninth-grade English presented to me in private. That is how I discovered the cold, harsh, lonely world of a Russian gulag (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn). It thrilled me. And my Intro to Psychology teacher introduced me to the psychologist who squeezed home from the dark despairing time he spent in a concentration camp, and built a new approach to dealing with human trauma (Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl). Other teachers contributed to that informal list of books I found inspirational and informative.
(There was even that time my Western Civilization teacher presented a chapter from a book that described that if only dolphins could combine their intelligence with some form of written language, they could have built a civilization to rival that of humanity. To this day, I found that passage fascinating!)
Yet, when I reached college, my extra-curricular reading faltered, and, at times, faded. I must have read stuff for fun, however, I have no recollection of them. Having majored in History, and minored in philosophy, there was no shortage of articles, books, endnotes and footnotes, and snippets of translation to satisfy my lust for reading. And I learned, so much from my reading assignments, when I did them (that damn procrastination and daydreaming, always getting in the way). And they were not boring, though they required a lot of skill and patience to decipher their meanings. My intellectual curiosity was constantly challenged and satiated during my college years.
But not my desire to read for the sheer pleasure of it. During that period, I lost it. Despite having access to a huge college library, and the minds of some interesting, inspiring, and just plain strange professors.
Thinking back right now, I cannot remember a single work of fiction I read during college, for myself, or for class (and I took Women's Writers class, with an adorable old female professor who adored me for some strange reason!).
And with the exception of a book about anti-American sentiment among non-US intellectuals (yes, I found that text fascinating, and read it practically overnight), some articles (one of which discussed the fascination certain Crusaders had upon discovering how natives of the Holy Land trimmed and shaved their pubic hair), and a chapter in a travelogue (the author, writing a decade before the iPhone, predicted texting and emailing would make us more honest in our relationships, because our thoughts could be broadcast publicly so easily), even my non-academic, non-fiction list was lacking.
Fortunately, that dark age of my personal reading would slowly transition into a renaissance of sorts. It would take nearly two decades, but it would eventually happen. My love of reading would return.
It only required thirteen years of teaching to reignite it.
(To be continued...)
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