Saturday, January 10, 2009

The Addiction-It's a Hard One to Break!

I could not bring it to bed with me last night. I had to leave it downstairs. It would have competed. I wasn't going to bring it home. I was trying to be strong. I stayed in the car keeping myself from temptation. "Girls, go ahead, I'll just wait for you out here, I'm tired." The girls left, I layed back the car seat. My eyes fluttered when I tried to keep them shut. So, I caved. I opened the car door and bolted.

I furtively looked for my daughters as I walked through the doors, good they were in another part.
It is the side room that I visit now and it is there that I give into my addiction. I can not help myself. They call, I answer. I put fifty cents into the red box affixed to the wall and it was mine. The Library is meant for borrowing but ever since this side room I often leave with a stack I will never return.

What a "find!" The title was not so much the lure, "One Man's Meat." Can you guess the author (only if you don't know, don't answer if you do) Would it be the local butcher writing his memoirs? Is it a jewish chap lamenting his dietary restrictions? No, not even close. It was the author that made me break.

E.B. White! How can you pass an E.B. White book. Just reading his sentences is an English class/Writing Seminar all lumped in one book. His writing is music.
His reason for this book intrigues me:

"One Man's Meat" was not a premeditated book, it was an accident. Two days before I left town for good, Lee Hartman, editor of "Harper's Magazine," asked me to lunch. Before the meal was over he had invited me to contribute a monthly department. He offered me three hundred dollars a month, and I accepted on the spot. This last-minute, unexpected job as a columnist was the genesis of "One Man's Meat." It turned out to be one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me. I was a man in search of the first person singular, and lo, here it was- handed to me on a platter before I even left town.

Once in everyone's lifetme there is apt to be a period when he is fully awake, instead of half asleep. I think of those five years in Maine as the time when this happened to me. Confronted by new challenges, surrounded by new acquaintances-including the characters in the barnyard, who were later to reappear in "Charlotte's Web"- I was suddenly seeing, feeling, and listening as a child sees, feels, and listens. It was one of those rare interludes that can never be repeated, a time of enchantment. I am fortunate indeed to have had the chance to get some of it down on paper."

I can not wait for free moments to s-l-o-w-l-y savor every word in every sentence. I'm gonna need a designated driver..........

2 comments:

rachel said...

i've decided to start at the top (er, bottom)...
you may call it an addiction, but i am inspired that you make the time to read, making time for yourself, with all the mothering and wifing that you do.
i do know the other side of the coin, too, though.
when the husband is waiting for me to turn out the lights, and i just. have. one. more. page...
(sigh)

Lynne Burkholder said...

Hey!
Someone is commenting, come in, do you want tea?????????

I do love to read and love reading a series with you. What's the next? Though our book club didn't really get going :).... A REALLY good book that you need to get today! is THE PRODIGAL GOD by Tim Keller.
You and Greg are going to really enjoy it!