Posts Tagged ‘lm montgomery’

The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it.  by James Bryce

Summertime is great for sun drenched days and lingering by pools with toes dipped in cool waters.  It is an excellent time to give yourself room to breathe and little getaways even when you are staying home for the weekend.  What better time to catch up on some reading.  Especially when, like in the southeast right now, there are days where the winds swirl and the rain pours down outside.  Hurricane Bonnie, to you I say, read and be merry!

Here is a list of my summertime reading list.  A few books that feel timely for the time of year, summer season, and just plain inspiration for people contemplating life amid summer breezes or hurricane winds.  The following books are some good summertime reads.  Some because they are timely with cinematic re-creations coming out (eat, pray, love), some because they discuss the way we eat and our natural world (animal, vegetable, miracle), some because they reflect on how we care for ourselves and how we view our bodies (women, food, and god), and some just because they are fun, insightful, clever, inspirational, empowering, dreamy or invoke the feeling of childhood (anne of green gables).  And some just because they remind me of summer intensives in undergrad as a literature major (ahem, Jane Austen anyone?).

10 SUMMERTIME LITERARY INSPIRATIONS:

1.  Eat, Pray, Love.  by Elizabeth Gilbert 
2.  Women, Food, and God by Geneen Roth
3. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
4.  Words That Matter by Oprah Magazine
5. The Bitch In the House by 26 women
6.  Mansfield Park by Jane Austen  
7. Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery  
8.  Change Your Brain, Change Your Body by Daniel Amen  
9.  Official Book Club Selection by Kathy Griffin  

10.  Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for the echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly,  I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.                                              byRichard Wright, American Hunger, 1977

The ex-English Major in me wants to deconstruct this sentence from start to finish.  Every word, every comma, every part of it’s structure is dripping with boldness and defiance.  It makes me want to get out of my chair and take action.  What action?  I don’t know but the potency inspires.  Just me? Ok.  So, I can get a little excited and emphatic about words.  That has always been the case.  Since early readings of LM Montgomery’s prose by my mother before I could utter full sentences I have been incited to action by words and brought more alive and bold in my own life by words I have read on a page.  I have dug in with my fingers to the prose and come out invigorated.  Just me again? Maybe.

But there is something about the creative experience, both imbibing it and creating it, that is profound and brings to life our own lives and living worlds to even greater vibrance than before we explored it through the lens of creativity.  Whether painter, scupltor, woodworker, photographer, writer,  or needlepointer there is osmething about the experience of art (creating or absorbing) that makes us be present, be in the now, and explore our own inner landscapes in new ways and to greater depths.  We mine ourselves and our world and up comes something, as Richard Wright states, that is worth saying.  And, as he describes, with every bit we create, every word that we write, even the tiniest reverberation draws us forward to create more and speak louder onto the page or the canvas or film.

Writing has been in my veins ever since I picked up my first pencil.  I had dreams of writing a novel when I was still scribbling on those giant pads with dotted lines in elementary school.  When I went through my traumas in my late teens and suffered for years with PTSD I stopped writing.   My inner landscape had gone numb and I lost myself.  Without the reflection of the word or the will to pick up a pen and speak I had no way to reflect back to myself who I was.  My voice had always been first in paper and then outloud.  When I came crawling out of PTSD years later I had to rediscover me–both in life and on the page.  Who was I? What was my voice? What did I have to say?  My writing life was so imbedded in my “self” and definition of self that I had to rediscover my voice on the page to know what I wanted to say in my life.

I wrote yesterday about empowerment and for me writing has been my voice, my picket sign, my empowerment far more than anything else.  I can write it before I say it.  Whatever “it” is.  Even my own rauma story came out on paper before it ever came off my lips.

What creative experience gets your blood pumping, your energy blazing, your vision of the world more acute and finite?  What creative experience makes your heart sing?  Maybe it is an actual creative art: writing, painting, photography, film, dance, theatre.  Maybe it is just something that brings you fully alive: swimiing, surfing, motorcycle riding, fishing, parenting.

What makes your heart sing?  What do you wish you had in your life to make it more vibrant and alive?   What do you have in your life that brings you that joy and energy for living that you are grateful for?

I thank writing for many things.  I thank my mother for teaching me the love of words.  Words have been my lifeboat.  What is your lifeboat?