Monday, August 13, 2012

Beware the chasmic gap

Strange, but I've not felt like writing in quite a while.  Not even emails to people I love, a quick note to people I like, not even, and this is worrisome, when communication was required to take care of Manor business.  I'm not lazy, I swear I am not.

It's Stephen King's fault.

When my Dad died in early July, I needed a new "main" book to read, as I usually keep several going at once, but concentrate on one in particular -- the one that goes with my midnight yogurt and the hope of sleep.  Don't laugh at my choice, please.

Tolkien's trilogy.  I'm mid-way through The Two Towers, as reading slow, and slowly, seemed important.  I had the collection stacked at the highest point of the hutch over my desk and needed one of the handy grabbers to get it down.  Even at the most familiar parts of the story, I did not skip a word, and The Fellowship of the Ring was a joy to reread.


Who knows what was going on between my ears.  Clear good, clear evil.  Honor.  Loyalty. World wars.  Treachery.  "Fly, you fools."

I got the series as Christmas gifts when I was 9, and immersed myself in them, escaped.  And that's all there is to say about that.

There came an opening in the book rotation, and in the pile of options was Stephen King's Rose Madder. The pile was a donation pile -- the Militant Lesbian Existential Feminists will soon be holding their annual book sale, and I hate to donate something I haven't even read.  Snort. Let's just say I'm over that.

Confronted with my weird choices, the area of my brain in charge of rhetoric and composition just gave up the ghost, and there went my writing, such as it was.

Beware the chasmic gap between J. R. R. Tolkien and Stephen King.  I saved myself from a forced reading of a compendium of Henri Nouwen quotes by a swift sleight of hand that landed its uncracked spine about two-thirds of a way down in the charity stack.


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