Lately, I’ve been reading novels.
Yes, this is noteworthy, because I spent about two years reading just about every book on healing and co-dependency and heart-brokenness and grief that I could get my hands on.
And then one day I was just like, Huh, I think I’d like to read a good yarn again. Actually, I’m pretty sure I did not think the word yarn. I never think the word yarn. I mean, I don’t even know how to knit or crochet or any of the wonderful things more talented people than I do with yarn. But, I remembered that feeling of reading a story and escaping into the intrigue, the happy ending, the sadness, the whatever, but the point is–ESCAPING.
You know, for a moment, anyway.
Self-help books, though? They are not an escape. They are a scalpel. And they cut right through your skin, your veins, your arteries, until suddenly you’re bleeding out and there is your heart, all dissected and open on the chinatown bus. And you didn’t expect to be crying and making promises to yourself that you ARE committed to life, darnit; that you will NOT give up and you will no longer think about laying down in the stream at the bottom of the hill you grew up on. All this, while the guy next to you is snoring with his mouth open, and you’re embarrassed to look at it–well, embarrassed for him, anyway.
Right, so I’ve started reading novels again. And I love it. I love to read. Some of the sentences I just stare at for a while, they are so beautifully constructed. They are little masterpieces and I’m in a museum, page by page making my way through, nice and slow. Like it’s only one o’clock and the museum is open until nine.
Aside from reading novels, I am doing stuff like this.
“You are not very pinchable, Jess,” Eli, my nephew, tells me tonight.
“What do you mean, bud?”
“There’s just not much to pinch,” he says, though I notice it sure doesn’t keep him from trying.
“Oh–I’m skinny?”
“Yeah, skinny. Not pinchable,” he says, and that’s that.
And would you look at this little elfkin?
Cute as a button, that one.
But watch out! He pinches.
Wow, yes, I noticed that very much too: Eli looks elvish, or at least hobbitish–a whole lot! Has he seen this?
He does look like he stepped right out of a Tolkien book, huh? WHere either an elf OR a hobbit will do. ANd yep, he’s seen it:)
Oy. The cute!! Love you all and I don’t even know most of them.
Also: “Self-help books, though? They are not an escape. They are a scalpel. And they cut right through your skin,” <- Uh, YEAH. For serious. I have a little deal with myself that every other book I listen to on Audible gets to be a not-at-all-uplifiting one. Sacred Marriage. Then the Sarah Silverman autobiography. Mere Christianity. Then a novel. Keeps me sane.
Yes, Mandy–that sounds like a perfect little deal with yourself. I have been really enjoying my novels lately–not really missing all the books on co-dependency and grief at the moment:)