Dear—,
I am going to stop reading.
I tried this out in December. Books I’d put on hold at the library, then stocked here for the holidays, went back today, unread. I am going to make a thing of not reading, because of the almonds.
Once, I almost died from almonds. Okay, that’s a little dramatic. I could breathe. But my hands swelled so much that I had to take off rings to save my fingers.
Another once: Very distinctly, a few years back, the thought came into my head—”Reading will save your life.” In some (dramatic) ways it probably has.
Today, I made pizza dough, which I have not done in a long, long time. It was something to do with Sandra’s Together post, about cooking. But it was also something to do with my walk, on which I thought about the almonds and how good they were until they weren’t good.
Reading is good. It is so good that I ask us to emphasize it at Tweetspeak. A lot.
But reading has become almonds for me, in its way. What happened with the almonds was this: I was enjoying, immensely, a stint with raw food “cooking” and there were all these delicious recipes for almond dips. I made them and ate them. And ate them. And ate them.
Then, one day, I was suddenly removing rings to save my fingers. For three years after that, I went without a single almond, until I got brave and began to introduce them little by little back into my life.
For the better part of this year, I’ve been trying to figure why I am so overwhelmed. There are, doubtless, multiple reasons, but it has suddenly occurred to me that reading is one of those reasons. After all, I start revolutions out of my reading notebook, and revolutions are costly endeavors, even if they are inspiring and fun.
It’s more than that, though. Reading fills my mind with ideas upon ideas upon ideas.
I recently put all my ideas and to-do’s onto a condensed list, categorized by home, business, etc. The condensed list filled eight pages. Each item on the list has its own set of associated ideas and to-do’s. Almonds! (I can almost feel the ideas and to-do’s cutting off my mind’s circulation.)
Then there’s the pizza dough. So many delicious things sit by unexperienced when my life is filled to the brim with ideas and no time to process them or bring them to life. I just don’t have the energy for putting my hands to things. But I also don’t have the energy to live inside my own head with all those unprocessed ideas and to-do’s. So there I am: no pizza dough days and not much progress on my ideas and to-do’s, either.
Throughout December, I did not read any books (except, which surprised me, a book I’d been needing to edit and hadn’t been able to approach yet). I did read poetry. And I will continue to do that, because poems are more like experiences and less like idea-generators. I will probably follow along with the Tweetspeak book club titles, too. Of course I will read the posts at Tweetspeak and participate in the community commenting. I might not read much email. I might not read articles, whether online or in magazines I have at home. I can’t say how long this will last, though I have a vision for a somewhat alternate life for the coming year.
One of our 2019 themes at Tweetspeak is going to be the Renaissance, as in the time period, but also as in being a “renaissance person.”
Books, oddly, keep me out of the loop from other parts of life—it’s not just that I don’t clean out my cabinets (I did this over the holidays, in lieu of reading!); I also don’t do other things, the way a good renaissance woman (or man) would. Music, writing, art, math, sport, and such, sit by unexperienced, along with that pizza dough I’ve been telling you about. (It was delicious, by the way.)
Now, when Megan asks for our reading lists each month, I am not going to have much to say, unless she allows comments such as, “For the past few weeks, I read the world through my fingertips: pizza dough, mosses on my walks, pastels on paper, piano keys and flute.”
Is this its own kind of revolution? Maybe. Though I don’t feel the need to plan it out or make it happen or create even one associated to-do list.
But how about you, Dear—, is there something that has become almonds in your life? If so, I wish for you the wisdom to discern that and put it aside… if that’s what you want to do, if only for a while. Almonds are good, sure, (I had some roasted ones today), but so is pizza dough, homemade. And I do so want that for you.
As always,
L.L.