The Desert of My Mind
May 17, 2009

If reading makes a mind fertile, then my mind has over this last month become a desert. Books read: zero.

I find that alarming, yet it seemed as if events kept coming at me requiring all my energy and attention—a move; a fire and an evacuation; handling two jobs  at work because of a co-worker’s long-term medical leave; and other assorted goodies. Picking up a book felt like a chore during my rare, truly free times so mostly I didn’t. Yet the one time I did I spent nearly an hour of much-needed sleep time reading so enthralled was I by How I Found Livingstone by Henry Morton Stanley. It’s part of the Great Adventures Series once published by White Star and now remaindered. (Good news for me; I got it at a great price.)

I have begun to wonder if a passion for reading, like enjoyment of physical activity, is something that can atrophy. If we don’t use it, do we lose it even if we have been “using” it since childhood? I don’t know, but what I do know is that I am finding I can fall asleep in bed without needing to read first. That’s a relatively new experience, and a disturbing one because reading myself to sleep is something I have done with near-constant regularity for as long as I can remember. Even if I make through no more than two or three pages—and it’s most often much more—I have always required some reading before closing my eyes. It prepares me for sleep, that slow, silent peaceful drifting in another world. But during this last month, perhaps half of the nights, I have taken a book to bed only to set it aside, unopened, in favor of turning out the lights.

How, I wonder, can a habit so ingrained for decades as to become part of me be this easily dismissed? Exhaustion plays a role, the same way it does when I don’t perform at least some physical activity each day. Miss one day and the next day is easier to miss. And the one after that and the one after that until I find that instead of heading out on a walk or for a swim after work it is now something I have to think about whether I want to do. And when it has to be weighed and considered it becomes much too easy to discard.

It happened with my exercise. I’d come home, drop onto the sofa and “veg out.” Now, however, in my new place, with a nice, rarely-used workout room, and a pool and Jacuzzi, I am re-discovering the reason I love to sweat. It feels good!  And there’s something about the newness of being here that has brought back my interest in renewing this part of my life. My muscles are a bit achy but they also provide a sense of deliciousness in my renewed awareness of them. My body is having sensations!

I want my mind to have those too, so I have taken to sitting on the temporary sofa in an otherwise empty living/dining room, to prop Stanley’s reminiscences on my lap and to open the book. Reading it gives my mind the same feeling that my body is feeling: a touch of sluggishness, some hesitation about beginning, then a settling in as the forward movement begins. One sentence leads to one paragraph, one paragraph to one page, one page to another until I find, as I did last night, that nearly two hours has passed while I followed along with Stanley during his arrival in Zanzibar, his temporary stop in Bagamoyo, his interactions with the local chieftains and businessmen, his descriptions of cultures and peoples from a nineteenth-century upper class white man’s point of view.

When I got my mental muscles going last night I found myself in a different century, a different life, a place and time so unlike my own that in a way I am traveling, like Stanley. I chose to get up off the sofa of my mind and move into the activity that I know pleases me. It takes deliberate effort for now, but each day I persist will re-awaken more and more the senses that are engaged in reading in the same way my physical senses are heightened when I am moving my body.

I want both physical and mental exercise to become a natural part of my life again so that however busy or stressful other parts may temporarily be these habits will not be laid aside. The human body requires movement to properly work. The human mind requires sustenance and challenges to be fertile. And, really, at the end of a day or a week or a year or a lifetime, isn’t it better to know that our bodies and our minds were shaped by ourselves rather than by events?

Upcoming Book Festivals:
Unfortunately, there are no book festivals coming up this week.

The Pub House:
Santa Monica Press likes pop culture. A lot. It’s not the only thing they publish, but you’ll find a lot of it here. Titles such as Roadside Baseball: The Locations of America’s Baseball Landmarks, a specialized travel book loaded with detailed descriptions of the events that make the locations worth visiting for all game fans; Just Doing My Job: Stories of Service from World War II, a compilation of stories of both civilians and soldiers who did what they needed to do to defend their country; We’re Going to See the Beatles: An Oral History of Beatlemania as Told by the Fans Who Were There, anecdotes, mementos, and photographs that trace the group from beginning to break-up; and Vanity PL8 Puzzles, a book of license plate brainteasers for the puzzle fan, all add up to quirky, amusing times for anyone with an interest in modern culture. 

Of Interest:
It occurred to me, while studying this bookshelf, to wonder what books would you, BiblioBuffet’s readers, would put into each state’s area. With a big enough house (and a very strong wall), this might be a real possibility for an intriguing way to display some of your books. For my native state of California, John Steinbeck is a natural. So is John Muir, Jessica Mitford, TC Boyle, Ray Bradbury, Pico Iyer, Anne Lamott, and too many more to fit. Who would you put in your state?

This Week . . .
Blood on Paper - the Art of the Book is an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum (London) that “examines what happens when major artists of today—artists renowned for work in other media—consider the matter of books.” The works in this exhibition include standard bound volumes as well as unconventional material, but their physical forms all broadcast messages even before they are opened, encouraging viewers to derive meanings from not only the words but the shapes.

Until next week, read well, read often and read on!

Lauren