A line cast, a hope followedMonday, April 05, 2004
I meant to read one chapter as I slipped into bed with it, but when I finally realized some time had passed, it was three hours later, 2:30AM no less. I was still reluctant to stop because the story hadn't ended yet, and I ached to know the outcome. But the lights had to go out.
My children have learned the hard way the sacred nature of books to their mom. Toss one recklessly onto the floor, write in one, treat it disrespectfully and the reaction is only slightly less dramatic than for the deliberate or unthinking harm of an animal or person. Books have a life. Which leads me to this quote from Kim Stafford, Director of the NW Writing Institute and son and biographer of William Stafford the poet.
"For the forest, seeds hinge open. For the river, rain taps and throngs. And for our tribe, books nudge, books feed-not one book but the book of all books: secret book, public book, forgotten book, book loaned often, never returned but passing on to banker, beggar, lover, babe in arms, mother's solitary finger and thumb, thin book read many times, thick tome as doorstop, flower press, battered booster for a child until the morning we need exactly what it holds and fan the pages to that place and read aloud, the book not yet written your time could make-your nights, tears, quick pulse when you close your attention out and open your mind in, shut your eyes where a story looms, a poem, fragment, cry. The most improtant book is the uwritten summer in your life, days dizzy and green with answers to our dark questions now. How else shall we be perennial as rivers abiding pure in the mountains of our strange ways?"
I know many of you bloggers have a book writing inside you. I've never aspired to birth that which I most love to hold, a book. Call me a foster mother then.
My children have learned the hard way the sacred nature of books to their mom. Toss one recklessly onto the floor, write in one, treat it disrespectfully and the reaction is only slightly less dramatic than for the deliberate or unthinking harm of an animal or person. Books have a life. Which leads me to this quote from Kim Stafford, Director of the NW Writing Institute and son and biographer of William Stafford the poet.
"For the forest, seeds hinge open. For the river, rain taps and throngs. And for our tribe, books nudge, books feed-not one book but the book of all books: secret book, public book, forgotten book, book loaned often, never returned but passing on to banker, beggar, lover, babe in arms, mother's solitary finger and thumb, thin book read many times, thick tome as doorstop, flower press, battered booster for a child until the morning we need exactly what it holds and fan the pages to that place and read aloud, the book not yet written your time could make-your nights, tears, quick pulse when you close your attention out and open your mind in, shut your eyes where a story looms, a poem, fragment, cry. The most improtant book is the uwritten summer in your life, days dizzy and green with answers to our dark questions now. How else shall we be perennial as rivers abiding pure in the mountains of our strange ways?"
I know many of you bloggers have a book writing inside you. I've never aspired to birth that which I most love to hold, a book. Call me a foster mother then.
