Art inspired micro fiction and mediocre ramblings enjoyed by a handful of people.
The Reader: An Autobiographical Tale
September 7th, 2006
Her life is spent between pages. Someone else’s words feed her soul. Someone else’s thoughts and characters have become embedded in the tapestry of her life. But, where do they end and where does she begin? Her mind is not an empty vessel, after all, waiting to be filled with the musings of another.
So then you have to ask, do the books she can not live without merely mirror what already exists in her heart? Do they reflect truths that she already knows, yet remain buried deep within complex layers of her psyche until she recognizes them as her own through the eyes and words of an author? She finds that the layers peel away with each new experience. Exposure to different authors helps her to blossom. Even an author who lived and breathed a century before in a time vastly different from her own. She can picture them sitting as they write, wondering if it is good enough and making revisions in the midst of candlelight. Never knowing that their words would mean so much to a girl not even born yet. Authors in another age with courage enough to scribble their very soul on paper. Yes, this person had more courage than she. For her days and nights (when not spent reading) are spent imagining tales and writing words she never intends anyone to ever read. She accepts the fact that she will never be a “writer”.
Or will she? It remains to be seen.
But to be a reader? This she is proud of. She knows she is part of a delicate dance between authors and those that read the product of their craft. For what is the beauty of a sonata if it is unheard? She is crucial to the dance, yes even to those who penned their words centuries ago. For their stories become a part of who she is, that is their immortality. They feed her and contribute to her. She is the parasite absorbing their creativity to feed her own. And she grows.
This post features Ophelia painted by Pierre Auguste Cot (1837-1883)
Technorati tags: flash fiction, Short Stories, pre-raphaelite, victorian, ophelia, reading
You captured much of my own relationship to books in this, and I suspect this piece may have been autobiographical.
A Wonderful Site. I visit here frequently because this is where I can find escape and refuge from a society that has, for me, has become increasingly alien and hostile. There is really not very much toleraton for those of us who by choice, or circumstance, are what we are. I would like imagine that as we visit with these wonderful, beautiful, people, that they live again in us.
Ditto to the above comments. Nothing more to say really.