:: book bound

Far too often I bemoan the fact that I am not reading as much lately. Of course, this is a judgement based on the amount of reading I was doing last year when I was unemployed and not attempting to lead four lifestyles at once.

Slowly, but surely, I am working my way through The Picture of Dorian Gray, and with every sit down, I am busy highlighting fragments of text that I either can't help but smile at for their truth, or frown at for their relativity.

"The only artists I have ever known, who are personally delightful, are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. the others write the poetry that they dare not realize." (p. 84)

Often, I wonder where ideas flow from - especially when there is such disconnect between the actual experience and the idea. Where do the emotions come from? Where does the knowledge? These grandiose images blend together to create occurrences that have never actually materialized and yet they feel so real on paper. They're ghosts of something that never was, but they're convincing.

I consider the stereotypical writer and his hermit characteristics. I ponder just how stereotypical that perceived stereotype really is. Perception, after all, is everything ...

And sometimes, I think I perceive and experience more right here, than I do anywhere else.