Saturday, July 11, 2009

Fun for One.

What is your particular joy in written words?

No, not the ones that march across your brain single-file, colorless and droll, with no back-beat. Those would be work emails, newspaper headlines, instructions, lists, reminders, actionable anythings. Not those.

The written words that only appear in your conscience with a voice -- a secret, new voice that would change the world if someone could just hear it too. The voice that has its own pace, coercing your rushed practical self into another way of being in order to participate in the experience.

We have the magazine voice. Ooooooooh, she says playfully in full frivolous mode. She darts about the page with glee, reading the snippets beneath colorful pictures with delight. Fashion for some, food for others, crafts, home decor, gardens. This voice weaves through the texts, brushing through some like passing through long grass in a breeze, smoothly, and with her eyes on the horizon, on more exciting things just over the flip of a crinkling page. If she's heard it before, which is so often the case with magazines, she flies by as regretful as a life lived with joy. She playfully collects ideas in an inspirational moment of passion, undeterred that her spark of genius or pleasure may evaporate into the ether when she turns the last page, or an external voice of husband, child, or knock-at-the-door blows her back to where she came from.

The classic novel voice. A beautiful, resonant sound that patiently cajoles my mind into a calm unhurried pace and leads me to a place of peace and beauty. This voice systematically points out the subtle nuances of a sentence, unfolds the ideas quietly and makes me wonder. She tells me to read the lengthy descriptions as they are of intrinsic value. She sets her lips firmly and refuses to speak when my mind loses patience and begins to devour the sentences quickly, skittering along the long paragraphs, seeking a quick thrill. Sometimes I can have read an entire page before I realize that she is silent, that I have heard nothing, and may as well read the page again. This is when she waits for me to pause and consider granting her my patience. When I do succumb, she rewards me with a quiet pleasure, a beautiful rhythm that calms me as the gentle picture unfolds. In retrospect, I am always enriched by her timeless turn and pleasantly satisfied that a beautiful classic lives in my mental library, deciphered and loved.

Children's books. She can be big, small, loud, gabbled nonsensical, musical rhyming galloping joy. She can be a he, or a tree. She can be disguised as a loving teacher of lessons, manners, and conqueror of mole-hills. She makes unbelievable sounds, puffing up into incredible flying balloons or courageous tiny hedgehogs, twinkling stars and rainbows of imagination. She is never the same twice, and nor is her audience.

Books of faith. She is whispered aloud by elderly people fingering the tissue pages of their battered bibles; she seems magestic on the faces of those focused on a line of their religious teachings, whether Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Buddhist. I sense her tone of authority as she speaks to the mothers reading out loud in their faith: Mothers, teach your children well.

And then, trashy or sentimental romance novels, grizzly detective stories, tales of fictitious war and adventure -- all theater for the mind. Many voices, images, self-absorbing drama and pure escapism at its best. Ultimate fun for one. Indulge yourself any way you like, and laugh, cry, be thrilled, outraged, depressed, uplifted or just plain feel happy to be with this crowd of characters in your mind.

And no one around you watching, can see a thing.