Read me like a book!

I put down my magazine and gently rubbed the strained muscles around my eyes a little before sipping at my hot chocolate. Do you enjoy reading my blog? Do you enjoy reading anything? I think reading is one of the essentials in life and I do feel sorry for those who cannot and I do worry at those in the world who have the opportunity to learn to read but somehow pass though their nations education system and leave it having severe reading difficulties! Reading helps us to grow as individuals because the things we read do affect us to some degree, no matter if it's a news item or a childhood story-book. You don't even have to think about it too deeply to realize that 'reading' is so much more then understanding the ink marks scrawled across pages. It becomes a focused experience, just you and the book and for a while the real world could disappear as you enjoy your private moments within your private pages.

The current novel that I'm reading, by Haruki Murakami, is a little hard for me to digest and yet at the same time I find it strangely compelling. I cannot rush though it, instead I have to wade slowly through a sea of beautiful but viscous words. We know that a play cannot be stopped in the way that our pages can be re-read to savor some passage or to ensure complete understanding (although we can with video and DVD). I can hold my novel complete in my hand and I can read it in my own time and at my own speed. I can read parts and re-read parts of it. I can sample it and devour it in part or in whole. This ability just adds to its value but of course the contents matter most. Novels sometimes do nothing more than amuse us and offer us an escape like the story-tellers around the camp fires of old would relate but even these simple stories can offer us something. Within it we can consider our own life experiences and see mirrored in the story the reflections of the world we live in. Perhaps the little twists and disguised truths may amuse us once we peer through such thin veils but the author's inspiration had to come from somewhere! We can also gain insight into the experiences of others. Ones we have not shared yet or indeed may never have the opportunity to do so. Restricting ourselves to our own personal experience and that of our families and close circle of friends is not a wide enough scope to the path of perceptiveness and wisdom. When we read the stories of these experiences that we will never live, it manages to enrich our own lives and our own knowledge. It gives us a chance to speculate, argue and sympathize with choices in life that we may never have to make, to live through another's eyes in times and places far distant from our normal ordinary lives. Even average novels that will never make the best sellers list nor be the discussion points of literacy circles can do this but the rule of thumb will be 'the better the novel, the richer the opportunities to experience the different dimensions and pleasures that a good book brings.

Books bring a promise to enlarge our understandings of ourselves reaction to events and as such they can expand our education. For centuries story tellers we not only a pleasing night's entertainment but also it was a way of informing listeners about possibilities beyond their own life circles and in a sense increase their knowledge through the related experiences of the characters. Once we can sympathize with others, even fictional characters, our own values and morals in life become focused and we begin to see others interests and needs and reasons for their choices. It makes us somehow more 'mutual' and we function better in groups because reading promotes insight into ourselves and into others. You can imagine then that a society composed of readers can make for a good one and those groups who do not can become closed and stagnate. I think about still ponds and running rivers for an analogy!

Writing is not everyone's 'forte' and although it is important, I would suggest that it is perhaps nowhere as near as important as reading. As long as some have the desire to write and give fuel to the passions of a world of readers, we shall not go hungry. Give a thought for a moment for those who craft such an art as they slave away through the hours over a well worn keyboard, seeking the perfect combination of words and the smooth flow of each continuous paragraph. The times writes seek inspiration and they have been stuck for the next step! Pacing the room in consideration of the last paragraph and then erasing it without remorse or pity. We dread the approach of deadlines and then we have the satisfaction of having it in print. Even then as you look back on it you realize that you could have done it better! I will miss that environment.

Hitomi is back on Saturday and to say that "I've missed her" is an understatement. I have a feeling of dread about me too because we need to talk about things, important things and of the future. We will exist in our personal dreams and nightmares, not perhaps in equal measure but co-existing nonetheless. I hope the 'binding' of our current volume is strong.