Educated without a background of reading

During an Q & A session after my talk at Butler University a month ago, I was asked to give sort of an "advise" to young American girls. My first (internal, of course) reaction was: goodness gracious who am I to give anyone any word of wisdom? Honestly, I wanted to scream and run away. I wished to say I'm just a writer; please please let me go home.

Indeed I didn't run away and didn't cry. I stood there and to sets of inquiring eyes earnestly gazing at me waiting to hear the wisest thing they've ever heard in their lives, I mumbled that girls need to read and they need to read a lot. Accordingly, I launched into explaining what I meant, which, considering the fact that I'm a much better writer than I am a speaker, I'm sure did not come out as grand as I intended it to be. At any rate, they got my point or at least I think they got my point.

Well, the past is in the past and one shouldn't be dwelling in it. However, what triggered me to write this short note is that I just read one of Doris Lessing's articles in her wonderful book Time Bites in which she argues that the all-encompassing body of knowledge people used to enjoy in the old days does not exist anymore--i.e. the one that was rightfully sprinkled with not only mathematics and religion but with arts and language and law and so many other good and favorable subjects. "This kind of education," she argues "the humanist education, is vanishing." She claims that one educated person had to feel at ease and very close to another educated person from another part of the world because they "shared a culture, could refer to the same books, plays, poems, pictures, in a web of reference and information that was like a shared history of the best the human mind has thought, said, written." [p. 69]

Lessing elaborately says what I tried to explain on that cold day in Indianapolis. "To call oneself educated" she continues further down on the same page, "without a background of reading--impossible."

I feel like shaking my finger in front of every young girl's face who passes me by and say: see, you need to read. You need to pick up books wherever you go. You must leave copies of books in different places of your residence, one two three or more next to your bed, one two three or more in the bathroom (yes, right next to the toilet bowl), even more copies in the kitchen. It doesn't even hurt to have a number of books in your car; they will definitely come handy during rush hour traffic.

It is always a pleasure to read especially if it has to do the old fashioned way; to have a hard copy in your hands, to feel the page, the paper, the black of the ink on the white of the paper, the sudden unexpected cutting of the skin on the edge of the page, that burning--the burning sensation of knowledge--formed in sweat in blood, if I may in some parts of the world, of writers.

My poems at The Other Voices International

I was asked to share a number of poems with the Other Voices International Project, a cyber-anthology of poetry. Participation in this anthology is by invitation only. If interested, you may find my poems here.

I would very much appreciate your comments, and do hope you enjoy. :-))