I go back to old books. I go back to old reads—one that feel as friend when, in reading, they speak to me again.
Walker Percy is one for me. Even if few know or read him now-a-days, I do.
I went back to another read today; one I’ve read, I couldn’t guess how many times, but enough to know some of the lines by heart and where in the work to find.
It speaks as a friend—in encouragement to reader, in openness of self, in way that makes me feel closer to and like in thought to author after having read.
It speaks about creative spaces, having ones that are entirely our own without need for justification or explanation but simply to have a place for what’s in us wanting expressed.
It speaks of boredom with what the internet’s become, and I couldn’t feel that more. That, and distrust for anything that appears from it in advertisement or promotion without my seek or prompt. How sad is that, to believe all that seeks to engage us is an artificial creation to exploit the spirit of our very real, true and living selves?
I read from same writer of a new year’s resolution—to speak with friends “IRL.”
“IRL”—I don’t get out much. I should make a better purpose and point, but at least in handwritten notes they’ll know the words and thoughts that show are mine—“IRL” even if not face-to-face.
I read not to overthink, to not talk one’s self out of, and to admit and allow, the pleasure and enjoyments of what truly makes us happy.
“Creativity is now I share my soul with the world and without it I’m not ok, and without access to everyone else’s creativity, we are all not ok…So that’s what I’m going to do. Right here, right now.”
I go back and read it often and, always, it speaks as friend—one who sees, knows, and reads my soul because it is akin and like to theirs.
I make it to the end again and, there, there is place for others to respond. For all the times I’ve read the words, I’ve never left a note. Years there, read and returned to again and again, no one ever has. Does the author know how much it’s meant to some?
I write to them, not on screen but on this page in conspiring hope that they will see and, reading, know what their expression means; not face-to-face but IRL all the same.
