Chapter 5: I've Lived & Loved enough for several Lifetimes...

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: writing and reading are a god-send. The ability to express yourself, the ability to be completely alone in the world and write down how you are feeling and have someone not even understand your original language, but understand your original feeling.... that is something only accomplished by the use of words. And where better to find a group of words to stimulate you then in a book?

I have been transported to the time of Jane Austen where my female independence warred with my blind ideas of true love and romance. I have fallen down a rabbit-hole, stepped through a looking-glass, and tried to hide in a wardrobe and come out the other side in a world only considered a figment of my imagination.

I've fought in a revolution, played in a Secret Garden, and flew with Tinkerbell and Peter Pan. My best friend has been a werewolf and I have fallen in love with a vampire. I've walked through the halls of a school of witchcraft and wizardry and belonged to a fellowship. I hid in an attic because I was scared of Nazi's and lived a life where my only concern was where I was going to get my next fix.

I have lived more lives in my 22 years, then most people have. I have experienced loss and love and dreams and death in ways that are both distant and near to me, similar, but surreal. And my obsession began with a Dr. Seuss book, when a silly Fox decided he just had to wear socks...

T.V. is killing the age of writing in ways that terrify me. Seasons on a television program will pass, but a book is eternal. I implore all of you to go out and read something; A newspaper, a magazine, a blog, a book, ANYTHING! Just go out there and get lost in the power of the written word! You will not be disappointed. There is a genre out there waiting to be discovered by you, waiting to sweep you off your feet and touch you in the most intimate of places: your mind, heart, and soul.

Love,
Ariday

"A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy." --Edward P. Morgan

[& because one quote wasn't good enough:]
"The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it." --James Bryce

[[& a third, I believe, is in order:]]
"Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book." --Author Unknown