Reading

I'm back to reading.  It's good for the brain in a way that corporate back-and-forth can't fulfill.  My ears aren't a refined enough palette to pick up on those small nuances birds make when they discuss their feelings.  I can close my eyes and imagine a bird and I know I can distinguish between a robin song, a towhee and a chickadee but, really, what they're saying is all greek to me (bar-bar-bar).  What I know, certainly, is that what is said in a corporate setting is often that same regurgitation of what seems like basic needs: "table stakes", "no bandwidth", "agility" all equate to the baby speak of "baba", "potty", "s(l)eep", mutually indistinguishable at any real depth.  But to read someone's words, an author of any note, is to have that United Nations ear translation in place and to be able to hear what someone is saying in your native language although it is uttered in theirs.  I am an insufferable snob for "classics".  I think this came from being encouraged to read them early on but also because their inaccessible nature to the masses made them appealing to me - acknowledging my elitist literary preference is a first step towards true change. 

When I was in my mid-twenties, I flirted with other authors having first had that dirty affair with Vonnegut.  I spent some time at the Boulder Bookstore and bought for my brother "Me Talk Pretty One Day" and read some of it before bringing it to him for Christmas.  I realize now, after 18 years in a corporate setting, that I have wasted a good portion of my intellectual life.  I am certainly more skilled and conversant in myriad software languages.  My awareness and acknowledgement that change is needed came from two places.  One - reading books to my children in those basic terms, even as their listening needs move to their own acquisition of reading skills - from Goodnight Moon to (paraphrased) "The misadventures of Flyguy and Splat".  Two - a small circle of friends encouraging me to expand beyond the classics and drop the line that "there's nothing good written after the 19th century and outside of Russia".  So... It's back to reading.  And it's ironic that the current read is a rewrite of my oh-so-dear story of Pygmalion.  Real life is messier than fired clay and we're all the better for it