Words

Family lore has it that when I returned from my first day of school, age 6, I told my mother that I hadn’t learned to read that day and that I thought it might take a week: I read 62 books that first year, winning the reading prize, and never looked back.

I read with the book on my knees at my desk in school; I read with the book on my lap under the dinner table; I read with a flashlight under the covers late into the night and if I now read in the open, I still use covers to hide my romantic novels (leading others to think that I am very religious – the cover is black). I read about everything except sci-fi and hard core mysteries; I read pamphlets, I read brochures, I read magazines (both junk and educational), I read novels, I read biographies, I read philosophy, I read self-help books, I read thus I am.   

Nirvana happened today: Powell’s, the City of books, in Portland. I restricted myself to a Bertolt Brecht (in German – the same in which the dinner check had been presented at Grüners Friday night) and one other – a minor miracle for those who know me.  

I hear them, I read them, I use them to speak, I write them: above all, I adore words.

Powell's, the City of Books, Portland, OR, USA