My thoughts on how the world works

I downloaded Pride and Prejudice from Audible because I got it as a free Valentine present. Audible (a subsidiary of Amazon) knows how keep its customers happy.

Audible is a particularly good choice for this, because you can easily imagine yourself back at the time of its writing – in 1813. The author, Jane Austen, delights in putting clever language into the mouths of her characters.

Want to hear what I mean? Click on Sample below the picture.

Back then, readers were much more social and liked to read out loud to each other – taking their time, and commenting to each other as they read. Life moved slower then, the fastest thing on earth was a railroad train. But it would not be too long before electricity (in the form of the telegraph) would destroy that world forever.

We cannot imagine that world now. And we cannot imagine anyone being that interested in literature.

Or being that interested in people.

The February issue, that is.

The first is Thomas Frank’s delightful take down of the movie Lincoln, in the front of the magazine. The second is a review of the book Madame Blavatsky: The Mother of Modern Spirituality in the back. Either one will make you glad you are a reader.

I have a personal gripe about the use of the word spiritual - and I used to complain whenever I heard it used. No more, I just keep my mouth shut and suffer in silence. I don’t suffer fools gladly – I just suffer.

Harper’s online is just the opposite of what it is on paper – it is telling its readers that it is not all interested in them. In this day and age – not smart at all.

Where on earth did I get this? Not from my father, certainly – who had no taste in literature whatsoever. Not even from my mother, who read to us such things as the Little Colonial stories. During one tragic interval in the story, I burst into tears – to my mother’s intense annoyance. I was not supposed to take the story so seriously, she said. I was amazed in turn, how could she not take the story seriously?

It was then that I began to realize that I was different – that I took life seriously – and emotionally. Something most people find strange.

But not everyone – I discovered other people, although never in person, who did have an interest in Literature. And who wrote about their experiences. As I am doing now.

I am listening now to Ancient Light - which is definitely literature – so much so, I sometimes find it alarming.

It takes me back to my childhood – when time moved more slowly, and where our world (back in a forgotten corner of the Midwest) still had time to be - and to be savored.

I remember one evening in particular - where I and my girl-friend of the moment went for a walk under the stars. She never noticed them, or the lovely evening – but instead took advantage of the moment to tell me how much she hated her father. An amazing hatred, as it turned out, that I never forgot.

I learned, for the first time, how attractive – and how destructive women can be. A strange combination.