When you read, you become bold, you identify with the characters, the Brothers Karamazov, you start carrying them around. Or Odysseus. Or one of the characters in Langston Hughes. A kind of inner boldness builds up.Over half of today's library circulation, she laments, is from video rental. Coaching us to read more, watch less, she wonders if the 'passive' entertainments are like empty calories:
It's not nourishing. We're starving.
This is not good news. We're getting flabby in the fanny and between the ears? What's next to finish us off completely? Soul steroids? Psychotropic fudge busters?
Here's my un-pulitzered laureate-less recipe for health and well being. Get sweaty with a pen*. Find what's in you; dig it out. Reading builds inner boldness? That's good, but writing disciplines your boldness. And writing is not so hard, if you have the will. As Rita Dove explains:
I look out at the world as a writer, someone trying to bring everything we can't articulate into some kind of language. It deals with a lot of silence, and a lot of patience to bring those silences out.I leave you with one last wellness tip: publicize your work; let the gimlet eye relieve you of your bombast. Shed your bluster on the mud room floor; your reader steeps the tea, awaiting you.
*a metaphor for your excavating tool of choice
No comments:
Post a Comment