Nothing, and To kill a mockingbird

Yesterday was a good day to do nothing.

Now don't get me wrong; I did something, but in this case I think that the sum of the things I did amounted to much less than the individual things I did. I mean, sure, I watched TV, and ate lunch, and sat around at home. But I had no net output.

...you know what? It felt kind of good. ^_^

And, I guess, good for nothing.

OK, but I did read a few more chapters of To Kill a Mockingbird. I'm enjoying it mightily. I cannot remember what I was doing the same day lat year, but I am fairly certain that I didn't read any fiction. I'm thinking that this English class is reawakening something in me that I thought was dead for a long time.

When I got to the second to the last page of Regeneration by Pat Barker, I put it down, uneasy. There they were, Rivers writing a report about Sassoon's progress in Craiglockhart, and I was keenly aware of the fact that if I read any more paragraphs in five minutes, Rivers would cease all conscious, observable thought, action,--change. In a sense, he would die, together with Prior, Sassoon, Burns, Anderson, Bryce, Sarah Lumb, and all the other characters. And I would kill them, they whom I have resurrected in my brain so that they could play scenes for both my escape and edification. Pat Barker, like Charles Dickens and Mary Shelley before her, made the dough, but I baked the characters in my own mind. And as a result my Rivers and Sassoon would be different from Jesse's Rivers and Sassoon and from the Riverses and Sassoons the thousands of other readers would have had.

I felt a sense of thrill in this co-creation, this amazingly intimate, unique collaboration between author and reader. In the last four years I have not read a single work of fiction (OK, that's most probably not true, but I cannot remember any) because I thought for a long time that my imagination is dead, or at least broken, and I didn't know how to fix it. As a result I read mostly nonfiction works, like textbooks and instruction manuals. But now I'm thinking about writing a reading list, and commenting on my latest characters.

If this tirade is a bit long, blame Kim. She gave me the questionnaires that gave birth to these thoughts. And I'm glad she did; I hope that this Summer doesn't halt my reading activities. And I guess I'm also glad that Elaine and Jesse own so many classics. ^_^

Thanks for reading.

Song in my head: James Taylor, "On the 4th of July". I thought of this song when I read about Prior and Sarah having their moment in the bushes in Regeneration.

P.S. You should really try reading fiction aloud. Sure, it can get tedious, but you're rewarded by hearing your characters talk. I credit To Kill a Mockingbird with bestowing my normal speaking voice with an Alabaman twang for the time being. ^_^