I've never read Siddartha, even though it's been on a shelf downstairs for years now! This by you means I will be reading it over Christmas.
And I love what you've done with the prompt here: how you've set the book in your own time/cultural moment, and shown how it became interwoven with your thinking about that in such a daily, sensorily…
I've never read Siddartha, even though it's been on a shelf downstairs for years now! This by you means I will be reading it over Christmas.
And I love what you've done with the prompt here: how you've set the book in your own time/cultural moment, and shown how it became interwoven with your thinking about that in such a daily, sensorily-charged way. It reminds me that books were always that for me until the smartphone/social media age - always fusing so completely with the day/a life stage... I think the winter of 2018 when I went up onto Firle Beacon in my car for a term, reading the Nobel Laureates while sitting out my shame and heartbreak: that was the last time books so fully interfused and also coloured life, in the way you describe here with such power.
What I love about this project - over and above the receiving of good writing - is how often now I change something in my life for the better after reading a piece like this... Thank you.
Thanks so much, as ever, Tanya. In this piece I was trying to find words for a visceral experience, the feelings and images of which I can still recall decades later. It's hard to find those words. But what a treasure that fusion of life and books is! I look forward to re-reading the piece you describe in The Cure for Sleep. I'm also interested to know how you balance reading books, which you clearly so love, with smartphone/social media activity - they're both such immersive activities, and so different in many ways. You offer us such a wonderful opportunity here, to see our words outside of our heads - and then there's your wonderful encouragement. Thanks so much again, xs
Oh now there's some good stuff to be talking about all together tomorrow, Sheila!
The deep interior time, that reading alchemy, you describe so vividly in your piece...and how to join a community of creatives and find an audience, we need sometimes to leave that place and be in another one. I'm trying this season - this project and my work til next October as a co-tutor on Sharon Blackie's online Hagitude forum aside - to retreat a little from my now-habitual scrolling and reading of fragments online. It's hard but I see it as repairing my concentration. I don't plan to leave social media as so many good people are met through it - you and me talking here an example of that! But I'm yearning for the kind of deep reading life I describe in the book from my early twenties, and such as you have written about here. xxx
I've never read Siddartha, even though it's been on a shelf downstairs for years now! This by you means I will be reading it over Christmas.
And I love what you've done with the prompt here: how you've set the book in your own time/cultural moment, and shown how it became interwoven with your thinking about that in such a daily, sensorily-charged way. It reminds me that books were always that for me until the smartphone/social media age - always fusing so completely with the day/a life stage... I think the winter of 2018 when I went up onto Firle Beacon in my car for a term, reading the Nobel Laureates while sitting out my shame and heartbreak: that was the last time books so fully interfused and also coloured life, in the way you describe here with such power.
What I love about this project - over and above the receiving of good writing - is how often now I change something in my life for the better after reading a piece like this... Thank you.
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/november-issue-reading/#sheiladecourcy
And look forward to meeting you and your fellow coursemates on Thursday!
Txx
Thanks so much, as ever, Tanya. In this piece I was trying to find words for a visceral experience, the feelings and images of which I can still recall decades later. It's hard to find those words. But what a treasure that fusion of life and books is! I look forward to re-reading the piece you describe in The Cure for Sleep. I'm also interested to know how you balance reading books, which you clearly so love, with smartphone/social media activity - they're both such immersive activities, and so different in many ways. You offer us such a wonderful opportunity here, to see our words outside of our heads - and then there's your wonderful encouragement. Thanks so much again, xs
Oh now there's some good stuff to be talking about all together tomorrow, Sheila!
The deep interior time, that reading alchemy, you describe so vividly in your piece...and how to join a community of creatives and find an audience, we need sometimes to leave that place and be in another one. I'm trying this season - this project and my work til next October as a co-tutor on Sharon Blackie's online Hagitude forum aside - to retreat a little from my now-habitual scrolling and reading of fragments online. It's hard but I see it as repairing my concentration. I don't plan to leave social media as so many good people are met through it - you and me talking here an example of that! But I'm yearning for the kind of deep reading life I describe in the book from my early twenties, and such as you have written about here. xxx