Sometimes I have such a need for words. It's a craving more insatiable than any other need or desire I ever feel. When I get this way, I long to read things like To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee and submerse myself in a Shakespeare and spend hours perusing Webster's Dictionary. At times like these I hunger for the wordiness of Dickens or Twain. Most of all in these fits of prose, I yearn to write. I fill pages and pages in my journal when I get this way. In times like these I wish to be back in school taking English class after English class after English class writing paper after paper after paper. I ache to spend more time with inspiring words. I become so weary of the limited scope of phrases such as, “eat your lunch”, “are your chores done”, and “knock it off, you two”. I want so much to feel the richness of words like “perchance” and “languid”.
Then reality slaps me in the face as one of my children chatters on about every ordinary thing in the universe -- on which she is, of course, an authority -- while another child explains to me why he needs this or that new set of Legos (which, by the way, dear reader, we have nearly enough of to build ourselves a house.) When this happens, I realize I am a lone island surrounded by an ocean of mundane nonperplexities (which by the way is not actually a word.) So I am sending out my SOS, someone, please send the coast guard. I think my island is sinking!
4 comments:
Love this post . . . as an English major surrounded by little ones who use phrases like "don't get me no potatoes" I frequently get a craving for words and books. In fact, if it's been too long since I read a book, I find myself compulsively reading anything in the general vicinity over and over. Road signs, notes from teachers, the calendar . . . etc.
In times like those, Austen, Dickens, Bronte, and even the scriptures can save your sanity!! All you have to do is find the time to read them!! Best of luck!
~Tina~
Tina,
I escaped into a book over the last few days. It was so great! I read Inkheart by Cornelia Funke. It was so good. Have you read it?
Jen
No, haven't read it . . . thanks for the recommendation! I'm always looking for good books! I read a Steinbeck over the weekend. "The Red Pony," one I hadn't read before. It was definately a Steinbeck, but I liked it.
I loved the first part of The Red Pony. Then it turned into a Steinbeck. I never like Steinbeck because he always starts out so good -- just the kind of book I love to read -- and then everything suddenly becomes twisted and morose and creepy and I can't put it down because I have to know what happens. I always expect it to come back around and have a happy ending, and it never does. It just leaves me with this sad, icky, empty feeling. Then I vow never to read a Steinbeck story again, but I inevitably do.
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