Long ago, after hearing me utter one quotation too many, my son said to me: "Is there any situation for which you don’t have a quotation?"
Perhaps I resort to quotations too often, but as I’ve explained before, quotations are the best words in the best order, and they do succinctly summarize certain situations.
I am in Ireland, sitting in a car and reading. All around me people are walking places, talking to each other. My wife is playing a flute in what is called a pub session. For a complicated set of reasons I have to wait for her and as far as I am concerned, the best way of passing time is not by making small talk with total strangers but by sitting and reading a book. And a quotation pops into my mind: "Most people say life’s the thing, personally I prefer reading."
That quotation sums up so much of my life: personally I prefer reading. In a sense, I am talking to others, or more correctly, being talked to by others who are not there: writers who have chosen their words carefully, written them down, and handed them on to me. What I prefer is carefully chosen words, words worth recording, worth publishing.
Too much of daily conversation is trivial -- ill considered words uttered to pass the time. I’m not saying people have nothing to say. We must communicate with each other. We have a deep need to talk to others & to hear from others -- otherwise we would be deeply isolated creatures and we would go mad, trapped inside our own minds.
But daily conversation can get very-very boring. Yes, there are some great talkers, and everybody has something of interest to say to others, but I can only take so much of inconsequential daily trivia -- how are you, isn’t the weather awful, are you having a good time. Help. Let me out of here. So I retreat to books. Most people say life’s the thing, personally I prefer reading.
I was deeply happy sitting there, in a car, reading, and I flashed back to another such moment in my life long ago. I am twenty four years old, a graduate student in Bloomington, Indiana. All afternoon I’ve been sitting in a bay window overlooking a lovely lawn, and all afternoon I’ve spent reading a book.
I can’t remember the name of the book, but I can remember being very happy because I was passing the day reading. My friend calls such clear memories of certain scenes in our life, flashbulb memories. They are flashbulb memories: I see me in that bay window. I cannot remember anything before or anything after or what I am reading, but I remember looking up from my book, knowing a great deal of time has passed, being extremely happy.
I think I have added another flashbulb memory to my collection of memories: me sitting in a car in a parking lot in Ireland; me sitting in a bay window in Bloomington, Indiana -- reading books. Most people say life’s the thing, personally I prefer reading.
Copyright © 2004 Henry Morgenstein