Tag: reading

Alone Together

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Think of this – that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.
~A.S. Byatt from Possession

If librarians were honest,
they would say, No one
spends time here without being
changed. Maybe you should
go home. While you still can.
~Joseph Mills from “If Librarians Were Honest”

Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?

Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts?

Why are we reading, if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage and the hope of meaningfulness, and press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power?
~Annie Dillard from “Write Till You Drop”

…for people who love books and need
To touch them, open them, browse for a while,
And find some common good––that’s why we read.
Readers and writers are two sides of the same gold coin.
You write and I read and in that moment I find
A union more perfect than any club I could join:
The simple intimacy of being one mind.
     Here in a book-filled sun-lit room below the street,
     Strangers––some living, some dead––are hoping to meet.
~Garrison Keillor 

The mere brute pleasure of reading–the sort of pleasure a cow has in grazing.
~G.K. Chesterton

photo by Kate Steensma

Each day as I decide what to share here, I think of each of you who might open my email, or click on a link to see what I have to say.

We are alone together, you and I, for only a few minutes. I consider that precious time you are entrusting to me and want to make it worthwhile.

When you read this, you may be eating breakfast, or in the middle of your workday at the computer, or on your phone during a commute, or sitting in a waiting room wondering when your name will be called.

Or maybe you are sitting in the bathroom, or past ready to fall asleep in bed.

I am honored and humbled to hear from you after our alone time together each day.

I too spend reading time alone every day, grateful for what writers write while alone. I don’t tell them often enough how they change my day for the better.

Some are long gone from this world, so I’ll never have the chance.

Like infinite blades of grass in a pasture, I find far too many words to read — so much to consume, so little time. I nibble away, blade by blade, page by page, word by word, but the greatest pleasure of all is to settle down into a good long cud-chewing session, redigesting and mulling over what all I’ve taken in.

It is brute pleasure to take in words that grow roots so deep they never go away, words that sustain and make me grow and keep me alive.   Words to illuminate from without and within.

That is something to chew on.

So from me to you, tell me how I’m doing…

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Page After Page

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Just looking at them
I grow greedy, as if they were
freshly baked loaves
waiting on their shelves
to be broken open—that one
and that—and I make my choice
in a mood of exalted luck,
browsing among them
like a cow in sweetest pasture.

For life is continuous
as long as they wait
to be read—these inked paths
opening into the future, page
after page, every book
its own receding horizon.
And I hold them, one in each hand,
a curious ballast weighting me
here to the earth.
~Linda Pastan “The Bookstall” from Carnival Evening

…for people who love books and need
To touch them, open them, browse for a while,
And find some common good––that’s why we read.
Readers and writers are two sides of the same gold coin.
You write and I read and in that moment I find
A union more perfect than any club I could join:
The simple intimacy of being one mind.
     Here in a book-filled sun-lit room below the street,
     Strangers––some living, some dead––are hoping to meet.
~Garrison Keillor 

You know who you are.

You are the person who stockpiles stacks of books
on the bedside table and next to your favorite chair.

The person who sacrifices sleep to read
just one more page.

The person who reads the cereal box when
nothing else is available near the breakfast table.

The girl who falls into an uncovered manhole
walking down a busy street while reading.

The objects of your affection may be
as precious as the Book of Kells.

or as sappy as an Archie and Jughead
comic book.

It’s the words, the words,
that keep zipping by, telegraphing

an urgent message: What’s next?
What’s next?
~Lois Edstrom “Bookworm” from Almanac of Quiet Days

Most of my life has been a reading rather than a writing life. For too many decades, I spent most of my time reading scientific and medical journals, to keep up with the changing knowledge in my profession. Even as a retired physician, I try to spend an hour a day reading medical articles but now have the time to dabble in books of memoir, biography, poetry and the occasional novel.

As a reader, I am no longer a stranger to the author or poet whose words I read. In a few instances, I’ve had the honor and privilege to meet my favorite authors in real life and to interact with them on line. Some are friends on the page as well as in my life.

I am no longer a stranger to many of you who read my words here on Barnstorming every day – I have been able to meet a number of you over the years. There is no greater privilege than to share our stories with one another.

No matter where I discover books – in an independent bookstore, in a little free library standing along the roadside, or inside the world’s treasured libraries filled with books of antiquity – I seek out the privileged sanctuary of turning page after page written by those who graciously give me a glimpse of their inner world.

If librarians were honest,
they would say, No one
spends time here without being
changed. Maybe you should
go home. While you still can.
~Joseph Mills from “If Librarians Were Honest”

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These Precious Days

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Perhaps as a child you had the chicken pox
and your mother, to soothe you in your fever
or to help you fall asleep, came into your room
and read to you from some favorite book,
Charlotte’s Web or Little House on the Prairie,
a long story that she quietly took you through
until your eyes became magnets for your shuttering
lids and she saw your breathing go slow. And then
she read on, this time silently and to herself,
not because she didn’t know the story,
it seemed to her that there had never been a time
when she didn’t know this story—the young girl
and her benevolence, the young girl in her sod house—
but because she did not yet want to leave your side
though she knew there was nothing more
she could do for you. And you, not asleep but simply weak,
listened to her turn the pages, still feeling
the lamp warm against one cheek, knowing the shape
of the rocking chair’s shadow as it slid across
your chest. So that now, these many years later,
when you are clenched in the damp fist of a hospital bed,
or signing the papers that say you won’t love him anymore,
when you are bent at your son’s gravesite or haunted
by a war that makes you wake with the gun
cocked in your hand, you would like to believe
that such generosity comes from God, too,
who now, when you have the strength to ask, might begin
the story again, just as your mother would,
from the place where you have both left off.
~Keetje Kuipers “Prayer” from Rattle #28, Winter 2007

These autumn days will shorten and grow cold.
The leaves will shake loose from the trees and fall.
Christmas will come, then the snows of winter.
You will live to enjoy the beauty of the frozen world,
for you mean a great deal to Zuckerman
and he will not harm you, ever.
Winter will pass, the days will lengthen,
the ice will melt in the pasture pond.
The song sparrow will return and sing,
the frogs will awake, the warm wind will blow again.
All these sights and sounds and smells will be yours to enjoy,Wilbur — this lovely world, these precious days …
~E.B. White (Charlotte talking to Wilbur) from Charlotte’s Web

Each passing moment is precious, as time flows relentlessly.

We, on a linear trajectory from birth to death, bear witness to the cycling of the seasons while earth spins and orbits through space.

The story of me, and the story of you, is not yet finished. While our heads nod, our eyelids become heavy, the Author is turning the pages, reading resonant Words that define our days.

We pick up where we left off, wanting to hear the next unknowable chapter. We try to stay awake, eager to see what comes next.

We aren’t quite ready to fall asleep, not yet.
Not yet…

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Out of One Hundred People…

barnstormingblog8 Comments

Out of every hundred people

those who always know better:
fifty-two.

Unsure of every step:
almost all the rest.

Ready to help,
if it doesn’t take long:
forty-nine.

Always good,
because they cannot be otherwise:
four—well, maybe five.

Able to admire without envy:
eighteen.

Led to error
by youth (which passes):
sixty, plus or minus.

Those not to be messed with:
forty and four.

Living in constant fear
of someone or something:
seventy-seven.

Capable of happiness:
twenty-some-odd at most.

Harmless alone,
turning savage in crowds:
more than half, for sure.

Cruel
when forced by circumstances:
it’s better not to know,
not even approximately.

Wise in hindsight:
not many more
than wise in foresight.

Getting nothing out of life except things:
thirty
(though I would like to be wrong).

Doubled over in pain
and without a flashlight in the dark:
eighty-three, sooner or later.

Those who are just:
quite a few at thirty-five.
But if it takes effort to understand:
three.

Worthy of empathy:
ninety-nine.

Mortal:
one hundred out of one hundred—
a figure that has never varied yet.
~Wislawa Szymborska “A Word on Statistics”
(translated by Joanna Trzeciak)

No one can tell me,
Nobody knows,
Where the wind comes from,
Where the wind goes.

It’s flying from somewhere
As fast as it can,
I couldn’t keep up with it,
Not if I ran.

And then when I found it,
Wherever it blew,
I should know that the wind
Had been going there too.

So then I could tell them
Where the wind goes…
But where the wind comes from
Nobody knows.
~A. A. Milne from “Wind On The Hill.”

Of one hundred people who encounter this post today:

will wonder what photos of clouds have to do with statistics:
ninety two

will puzzle over what wind has to do with statistics:
seventy six

will delete without reading since it has to do with statistics:
twenty four

will “like” it because they are supportive gracious people:
six

will write a comment – if words come to them:
three

will wonder why it was necessary on a Monday morning
to be reminded about their mortality:
one hundred

At least it is nice to know we aren’t facing this alone…

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A Gradual Peeling Away

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So what is the finding of a friend
but the gradual peeling of an orange—
the tough rind begins to yield,
and the rich, juicy fruit drips in your hands,
and you taste sweetness
that quenches a life-thirst.
~Carol Bialock, “The Finding of a Friend” from Coral Castles

A poem should be palpable and mute   
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless   
As the flight of birds.

                         *               

A poem should be motionless in time   
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,   
Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time   
As the moon climbs.

                         *               

A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean   
But be.
~Archibald Macleish (1892-1982) “Ars Poetica” from Collected Poems 1917 to 1982

A poem is a good friend who is revealed gradually,
someone you get to know so well you want to hear
once again the sound of its voice.

Its words quench your thirst for insight,
yet its silence is also part of the rhythm.

It is cyclical as the phases of the moon, ever-changing
yet never-changing, entangling your mind before setting you free.

It may take on a new appearance on the next reading,
opening up questions and a new destination.

It leans into you, in comfort, and
offers illumination.

Like a good friend, a poem simply becomes…
…what you seek,
…what you want,
…what you need.

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Why Not Stop and Do Nothing For A While

barnstormingblog4 Comments

You see them on porches and on lawns
down by the lakeside,
usually arranged in pairs implying a couple

who might sit there and look out
at the water or the big shade trees.
The trouble is you never see anyone

sitting in these forlorn chairs
though at one time it must have seemed
a good place to stop and do nothing for a while.

Sometimes there is a little table
between the chairs where no one
is resting a glass or placing a book facedown.

It may not be any of my business,
but let us suppose one day
that everyone who placed those vacant chairs

on a veranda or a dock sat down in them
if only for the sake of remembering
what it was they thought deserved

to be viewed from two chairs,
side by side with a table in between.
The clouds are high and massive on that day.

The woman looks up from her book.
The man takes a sip of his drink.
Then there is only the sound of their looking,

the lapping of lake water, and a call of one bird
then another, cries of joy or warning—
it passes the time to wonder which.
~Billy Collins “The Chairs That No One Sits In”  from Aimless Love

I don’t take enough time
to do nothing.

I think about doing nothing all the time
but then I do nothing about it.

Too many lonely benches on porches
so many empty chairs
too many vistas unnoticed
so many birds singing with no one listening

all deserve an appreciative audience,
someone who is simply there to see and hear and be.

Perhaps today.
Possibly today.
Maybe, just maybe,
today.

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The Hope for Meaningfulness

barnstormingblog3 Comments

Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?

Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts?

Why are we reading, if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage and the hope of meaningfulness, and press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power?

What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and which reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered?

Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love?

We still and always want waking.
~Annie Dillard from “Write Till You Drop”

…today, the unseen was everything. The unknown, the only real fact of life.
~Kenneth Grahame from Wind in the Willow

To find your voice you must forget about finding it,
and trust that if you pay sufficient attention to life
you will be found to have something to say
which no one else can say.
~Denise Levertov

We search for the unseen, hoping to find meaning in the unknown.

I am bewildered by life much of the time. Anyone looking at these online postings can see the struggle as I wake each day to seek out what I’m called to do and how to make this sad and suffering world a little bit better place.

I have little to offer a reader other than my own wrestling match with the mysteries we all face.

When a light does shine out through darkness,  I am not surprised. I simply needed to pay attention. Illumination was there all the time, but I needed the eyes to see its beauty laid bare, peering through the cracks of darkness.

Light beyond shadow,
Joy beyond tears,
Love that is greater when darkest our fears;
deeper the Peace when the storm is around,
nearer the Hope to the lost who is found.
Light of the world, ever shining, shining!
Hope in our pain and our dying.
in our darkness, there is Light, in our crying,
there is Love, in the noise of life imparting
Peace that passes understanding.
Light beyond shadow,
Joy beyond tears,
Love that is greater when darkest our fears;
deeper the Peace when the storm is around,
nearer the Hope to the lost who is found.
-Paul Wigmore

Light after darkness, gain after loss,
Strength after weakness, crown after cross;
Sweet after bitter, hope after fears,
Home after wandering, praise after tears.
Alpha and Omega, beginning and the end,
He is making all things new.
Springs of living water shall wash away each tear,
He is making all things new. ​
Sight after mystery, sun after rain,
Joy after sorrow, peace after pain;
Near after distant, gleam after gloom,
Love after wandering, life after tomb.
~Frances Havergal

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A Book and a Shady Nook

barnstormingblog3 Comments

O for a book and a shady nook,
Either indoors or out;
With the green leaves whispering overhead,
Or the street cries all about;
Where I may read all at my ease,
Both of the new and old;
For a jolly good book whereon to look
Is better to me than gold.
~John Wilson (early 19th century Scottish author)

Suzzallo Library, University of Washington, Seattle
Yale Divinity School Library
Village Books, Lynden, WA

…for people who love books and need
To touch them, open them, browse for a while,
And find some common good––that’s why we read.
Readers and writers are two sides of the same gold coin.
You write and I read and in that moment I find
A union more perfect than any club I could join:
The simple intimacy of being one mind.
     Here in a book-filled sun-lit room below the street,
     Strangers––some living, some dead––are hoping to meet.
~Garrison Keillor 

Trinity College Long Room, Dublin

You know who you are.

You are the person who stockpiles stacks of books
on the bedside table and next to your favorite chair.

The person who sacrifices sleep to read
just one more page.

The person who reads the cereal box when
nothing else is available near the breakfast table.

The girl who falls into an uncovered manhole
walking down a busy street while reading.

The objects of your affection may be
as precious as the Book of Kells.

or as sappy as an Archie and Jughead
comic book.

It’s the words, the words,
that keep zipping by, telegraphing

an urgent message: What’s next?
What’s next?
~Lois Edstrom “Bookworm” from Almanac of Quiet Days

Beinecke Rare Book Library, Yale University

Most of my life has been a reading rather than a writing life. For too many decades, I spent most of my time reading scientific and medical journals, to keep up with the changing knowledge in my profession. Even as a retired physician, I still spend an hour a day reading medical articles but now have the opportunity to dabble in books of memoir, biography, poetry and the occasional novel.

As a reader, I am no longer a stranger to the author or poet whose words I read. In a few instances, I’ve had the honor and privilege to meet my favorite authors in real life and to interact with them on line. They are friends on the page as well as in my life.

I am no longer strangers with many of you who read my words here on Barnstorming every day – I have been able to meet a number of you over the years. There is no greater privilege than to share words with one another.

No matter where I find my books – in an independent bookstore, in a little free library standing along the roadside, or inside the world’s treasured libraries filled with books of antiquity – I’ll seek out the sanctuary of a shady nook, either inside or out, where I can open the pages to meet up once again with my friends.

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This is a perfect book of words and photos for your shady nook – available for order here:

To Gather Paradise

barnstormingblog2 Comments

I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –
Impregnable of eye –
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky –

Of Visitors – the fairest –
For Occupation – This –
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise –
~Emily Dickinson

The possibilities contained within a Dickinson poem are doors and windows standing wide open for interpretation and comprehension. When I visit Emily’s dwelling full of mysterious capitalizations, inscrutable dashes and sideways rhymes, I am blind, get easily lost, stumbling over this and that, and end up wondering where she is leading me and how far I’m willing to go.



Yet she tells me
– This –
to get my attention, hold it fast, to look up and out, beyond, and into forever.

-This-
is what I must do when I read her carefully chosen words and dashes
-This-
is what I ask of a reader who opens my email or comes to my daily post
-This-
is us dwelling in possibility for a moment or an eternity,
all eyes and windows and doors wide open to grasp a glimpse of Paradise.

-This-
is our hands spread, ready
to gather, to hold, to embrace, to pray, to fold
to prepare us for Whatever Comes Next…

photo by Sara Larsen

If you enjoy these Barnstorming posts, consider ordering this Barnstorming book – available here:

Strangers Hoping to Meet

barnstormingblog8 Comments

A bookstore is for people who love books and need
To touch them, open them, browse for a while,
And find some common good––that’s why we read.
Readers and writers are two sides of the same gold coin.
You write and I read and in that moment I find
A union more perfect than any club I could join:
The simple intimacy of being one mind.
     Here in a book-filled sun-lit room below the street,
     Strangers––some living, some dead––are hoping to meet.
~Garrison Keillor from “November”

Better far than praise of men
‘Tis to sit with book and pen…

I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.
~ninth century Irish monk from “Pangur Ban”

Most of my life has been a reading rather than a writing life. For too many decades, I spent most of my time reading scientific and medical journals, to keep up with the changing knowledge in my profession. That left too little opportunity to dabble in books of memoir, biography, poetry and the occasional novel.

Now in semi-retirement, I’m trying to rectify that deficit, spending wonderful hours reading books I feel immersed within. As a reader, I am no longer a stranger to the author or poet whose words I read. In a few instances, I’ve had the honor and privilege to meet these authors in real life, or to interact with them on line. They have become friends on the page as well as in my life. What a miracle of the modern age!

I am no longer strangers with many of you who read my words here on Barnstorming every day – I have been able to meet a number of you over the years. It is a joy to find new friends through my words!

In the summer of 2013, Dan and I wrapped up our Ireland trip with one day in Dublin before flying home. I wasn’t sure I could take in one more thing into my overwhelmed brain but am grateful Dan gently led me to the exhibit of the Book of Kells at Trinity College along with the incredible library right above it.

I needed to see the amazing things of which man is capable. My weariness was paltry compared to the immense effort of these dedicated writers and artists.

The Book of Kells is an intricately illustrated copy of the Gospels from the ninth century, meticulously decorated by Irish monks with quill pens and the finest of brushes. Two original pages are on display at the library and the brief look one is allowed scarcely does justice to the painstaking detail contained in every letter and design.

Upstairs, is the “Long Room” of 200,000 antiquarian books dating back centuries, lined by busts of writers and philosophers. It is inspiring to think of the millions of hours of illuminated thought contained within those leather bindings.

The written word is precious but so transient on earth; it takes preservationist specialists to keep these ancient books from crumbling to dust, lost forever to future generations.

The original Word is even more precious, lasting forever in the hearts and minds of men, and exists everlasting sitting at the right hand of God, never to disintegrate to dust. He is the inspiration for the intricate beauty of the illustrated Gospels we saw that day.

God is the ultimate source of wisdom for civilization’s greatest writers and poets. He alone has turned darkness into light even in man’s most desperate hours. Our weariness dissipates along with the shadows.

God is no stranger to us – He meets us in His Word and our reading is our ladder to Him. In that meeting, we are forever His.

Finally meeting Diana Gabaldon after a long correspondence with her on line
Village Books – Lynden, Washington – our local independent bookstore