Brain dump

I have never heard anyone refer to reading as a form of art but I do. It is a skill that when nurtured can become a very powerful form of art. I love reading because it takes me to places I only read about. I read a lot but I am not a fast reader, in fact, in my opinion it is not about how many books you read in a certain period of time, but what you get out of reading. I wish that I could read faster though. I wish that I could absorb information more quickly. But, I also recognize that when I’m reading I’m doing more than just interpreting the markings that make up a strung together series of words. I’m scouring through sentences and syllables in the hopes that, maybe, I’ll be able to slip into the small spaces between the structures of language, where seemingly secluded and separate things start to seep into one another.

Reading helps me escape from the cruel realities of life. I started reading at a very young age. Back then I did not have a reason for reading; I mean not a specified reason anyway. I read for pleasure and the more I read the more I liked that I was able to absorb information that otherwise I wouldn’t have known if I did not read. That I soon realized when in conversations with my peers I’d come up with somethings that they would frown upon and ask me sarcastically, “How do you know that?” or “where did you hear that?” that I knew things not ordinary people would know or a kid my age would know. I signed up in the local library and read. Mostly fiction, but my inquisitive mind would read almost anything that caught my attention.

Through reading I have learned about things happening all around the world. In the early 80s I was intrigued by the life stories of celebrities such as Princess Diana, Zola Budd the South African Athlete, Marilyn Monroe, Elton John, OJ Simpson, Mike Tyson, Michael Jackson and many more. I started learning about the lifestyles of rich people, especially actors. It was only while I was in high school that my interest switched to politics and politicians. Maybe because of what I studied in the History class.

Soon, reading became a habit that offered me a free ticket to escape into the pages of the fantasy world. Every page is a whiplash that pulls me from the normal patterns of daily living as I discover that each page contains an intricate network of wormholes that reveal rifts through time and space; places where the past is made revelatory, where the future becomes present, where now becomes perpetual. I escape from the claustrophobic constraints of all that I cannot control through the doorways of a self-transcending structure, and when I emerge on the other side of the literary twisting, I find myself fully realized. My reality becomes more profound and real in all its essence. Every book that I read reforms and restructures me. My common thought patterns get transformed as my mental capacity expands with newly deciphered knowledge as I become part of the characters of the book; mainly I become the alphabetic character that crawls between the strung together words. Each book that I read teaches me something about myself and the world that I live in. It opens up worlds inside my head, worlds to explore, play with and roam around in. This fictitious world becomes part of me.

When I’m tired, lost, stressed, anxious, depressed, alone and overwhelmed by life, when I feel so unbearably slow, when my eyes burn with tears that I have been holding back all day and all my atoms ache, when everything hurts. When extinction feels not only eventual, but inevitable and when survival is almost always an exception, nothing provides me with the same kind of comfort and consolation as simply sharing the materiality of space with a collection of physical books. Nothing beats the smell of fresh ink and paper; it is my favorite hypnotizing smell. I know how every closed and constricted corner of whom I am opens up and releases when I read. How every strangled part of me gasping for air starts to breathe freely and exhales without constraints.

Every book I open, opens up a little more and the whole world responds. Breathing becomes easier, the world, my world breathes too and everything expands. My knowledge, experiences everything becomes rich and pregnant. I become the vessel that contains all the vocabulary that articulates all my experiences from childhood until adulthood but the best way of sharing that is through writing.

Writing is my way of painting my soul on paper. My world is made out of words, some somber, gloomy, bright, cold, deadly, crazy, funny, sad, happy are all words of who I am. I write, not only to tell my story but to record my experiences for the day that dementia will rule my world and I will no longer remember my name. Writing is how I relate to the world. It is a grateful return, a show of thanks and connection to the elaborate interwoven-ness of all that I have been the recipient of. It is a way of expressing the unspoken thoughts of the inner soul. It speaks of every emotion, fills my mind and the output becomes the artwork on paper.