from A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE
Can they see my centre---
Biographies
Feel my edges---feel my
bumps?
How will they know…
If I do not---show and
tell---them?
My book is real---needs no
writer
Harder---than, the marker
of Life
There---before the face of every
heart
That sees---upside down...
If I ever read, which I didn’t much, until a few months ago when I became conscious of reading, I had always read novels and those that had come my way mostly secondhand, due to being poor; and of those, the majority were children’s classics: I homeschooled my children. But a new world has opened up to me recently, reading-wise; and I've found that old adage to be true: ‘truth is stranger than fiction.’ The dramas of real people, who had really lived, or were still living made extraordinary stories with twists too insightful to be found in fiction. Characters explained by biography necessarily issued a deeper form of thinking, which, legitimately, carry us along new pathways of fascinating introspection. Our identifying with a real person, feels right and more valuable somehow, more comfortable, or noble than identifying with a fictitious character. Not that fiction isn't awesome, too; it is! It, also, is a teacher. But through the labyrinth of biography, inside paths of a real life reveal and draw out vital elements from the insides our own life; and encourage us in our own struggles motivating us toward greater bravery.
The deeper the inward gaze of a live person the more succor there is for us in a book, and the more meat there is to chew on. We have to look in, before we are strong enough to look out and see. Exploring of the pathways of the brain and psyche is the quest of the twenty-first century, and its territory. We know this instinctively. We know there is something ahead just out of reach. But still, the way to the fore is clouded: we reject it; we do not wish to fully understand that it is only through suffering.I read my first serious, human biography only a couple months ago. Previously, I had read only Natural History biographies; (animals and plants were easier to understand than people!) The book was Gavin Maxwell. A Life; Douglas Botting; and I was, fascinated. I lived in this book for weeks. I learned a great deal more about an extraordinary person and about people in general, and to always deeply appreciate their idiosyncrasies, gifted or otherwise. Strangely, the more there were, the more I found the person precious; and this, I believe, is the work and purpose of biography. I also learned more about otters and wild animals, and about myself. As I have mentioned earlier, this book worked needed compassion in me.I am now beginning to read a new biography of the reclusive nineteenth century American poet Emily Dickinson; Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Feuds (Lyndall Gordon) and I am thrilled. Once again, things dwelling below the surface are being confirmed. Now I know why I always wanted to put far more pauses between words and phrases in poetry. I would put them in then take them out: I had not fully understood why I had wanted them there and so lacked the courage to do so. But now I do. And I am free! But what if I had not read this book and found the answer to…the riddle of spaces…it was meant to be! This book is fast becoming a treasure to me; and Dickinson a much admired ‘alive’ person; and needed helper and mentor. I have never had one before, in any shape or form; I have always walked in ‘the dark’…the unknown; and, literary-wise, entirely alone.I wonder. If biography is enlightening, perhaps autobiography could be more so, for there is no intermediary between the protagonist and the reader. Who better to tell their story than the one to whom it belongs? I think I’ll find a few autobiographies to read, after I've read the two interesting looking biographies that await me on the coffee table; C.S. Lewis, and Robert Louis Stevenson; a few of who’s works I've read, definitely not enough, but I would like to know more about their authors.This might sound strange for an adult, but I feel as if I am growing up at last; or graduating; or coming of age---or at the end of some long process of being released from a prison. Perhaps this is why I have become conscious of reading; and this in turn, why I am finding so much to see in it.I missed out on the world’s normal quantity of book reading in my life: I did read only one, and for many years, and that overall, for a sad reason. But everything in our lives works together for good; and even if we can’t see it yet a rewarding destiny awaits every brave explorer of love and truth. BIOGRAPHIES---the true story of other lives---makes our own lives more meaningful---opening doors into our own---through which we can find---a richer life---and new friends in other realms. BIOGRAPHIES---can rock our boat---just a little---making our ‘see’ faring voyage---just that little bit more exciting---for sailing through the stories of ‘lives like loaded guns’---can make us shorten sail, and ease our ride---or put up flying spinnakers to speed us up!
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