I’m looking at an image by Canadian artist Denis Chiasson. I see with an old woman’s eyes now. The image is not as clear as I need it to be to discern if she is holding a pen. I choose to think she is. I also choose to believe she is reviewing a card she just inscribed for someone. Perhaps to accompany a gift.
She looks a lot like me in my youth. Thin. Angular. Limber. But she is too still. At that age, I was a blur, always moving, always doing. I inscribed many cards with heartfelt sentiments, but often while standing in line at the post office or while talking on the phone at work.
Perhaps the woman in the image is just reading.
I did read a lot. Incessantly. If I wasn’t working or dancing or getting ready for those two activities, I was reading – lost in other worlds.
I delighted in well-researched historical novels with the occasional foray into romance. Kathleen Woodiwiss was a favorite of mine in that genre. It wasn’t until later that I realized she was poisoning my mind. Love does not start with rape.
What strange times I’ve lived through.
I preferred, at first, to read on the sofa, sometimes reclining and sometimes sitting, moving to the bed about an hour before I needed to shut off the light. Eventually, I read in bed whenever I could.
I am reviving my reading habit. The events of the last 12 years took it from me, not the least of which is the age of my eyes and the arthritis in my hands. Holding a book can be uncomfortable, particularly while supine. I have brushed the dust off the Kindle, and it’s a godsend. It weighs nothing, and I can enlarge the print. It’s been a fabulous return to the magic of squid juice on wood pulp – a phrase Frank X. Walter uses to describe writing. But in this case it’s pixels on glass. Or something like that. I no longer even try to keep up with the terms of new tech.
I used to carry books with me everywhere. Since I held the opinion that the thicker a book was the better it was – a publisher would not put the money into such if it weren’t an exceptional story – the tomes I lugged around were huge. Some were nearly a 1000 pages. Coupled with a typing speed of more than a hundred words a minute and a lifetime of earning my living at a typewriter or keyboard, it’s no wonder my hands ache.
The Kindle will be so much easier. It will slip into most of my purses and weighs nothing – a boon to cramping arthritic hands.
Technology continues to be good to me.
Can you imagine the wonder of the printing press? Gutenberg changed the world. A revolution, but like all new technology, it wasn’t without controversy.
I despise Artificial Intelligence (see? – new tech controversy), but Google’s AI finds a half-remembered meme.
Terms like “reading rage” or “Pamela-fever” described the concern that grew as books became easier and easier to own and literacy spread like a virus.
Crescendoing in the 1800s, “Reading Rage” sparked debates over the new media’s impact. Google AI also tells me that Pamela-fever refers to Samuel Richardson’s novel Pamela and that Goethe’s Werther, along with Pamela, challenged social conventions and encouraged independent thought, provoking a backlash. I understand parents particularly feared for their teenage kids.
In these years of constant new media and new tech, parents still worry for their children. Some things do, in fact, not change.
I’ve read Pamela, though I don’t remember it, but I have no Goethe in my brain other than a quote here and there. I’ll rectify that. He’s considered a classic, and there are many classics on Kindle for free or pert near. Anything that inspires independent thought and challenges social norms is right up my alley.
It looks to be another gloomy day. I will delight in crawling underneath sheets and blankets with my beloved dachshund Emmylou nestled against my back – reading. And then no doubt napping.
An enjoyable day ahead of me. I think.
I hope so for you as well. Happy Boxing Day.
W. Va. Fur and Root 