[Ann] stared dully at her marbles. This one is red, she thought. I see the color and I call it red. But what if... what if somebody else were to look at it and see the color I call blue but call that color red. How could you tell if this happened? It wouldn't help to ask what color it was, because they would say red eve if it was blue. They would have been taught to say "red" when they saw blue. Their red would be blue. But doesn't red have to be red? Isn't red something? Not just a name or label?
- Dream Sister, Alexandra Whitaker (p118, in my book anyway)
It's been a long time since I read that book - I'd forgotten that it isn't all "younger stuff" - meaning, I'm almost 19 and I can still read it without saying something like "Aaaargh I just can't do it anymore!"
I tried to read Goosebumps at James' house a little while ago, because I was bored out of my mind, and I put it down about a third of the way in. I'm actually a little surprised that I made it that far.
But that isn't what I wanted to talk about. Or is it? Hmm.
I came here after reading "This sentence is in spanish when you're not looking" with the intent of talking about perceptions, as in the above quote. I had to run downstairs and go through all my little books to find Dream Sister, and then of course I couldn't remember where the quote was in the story...
**sigh**
It's interesting, how my mind jumps about so easily. But now that I've forgotten entirely what I meant to say about perceptions and how fucked-up I start feeling if I think about other people seeing me as a BEM, I might as well go back to that whole I-can't-read-Goosebumps-anymore-because-I'm-not-10-anymore thing.
It's so weird. When you look back at your life, it's hard to see yourself as a tiny little thing who doesn't understand much in the world. No matter how many times I go back and look at old work that I've done, or just things that I've written even a year ago, I'm always a little surprised at how different I was then, as opposed to now.
And seeing stupid spelling mistakes in my grade two journals are included in that surprise. I do remember being a sort of conceited little kid at school, probably because I thought I could read better than anyone else in the class.
So much for refusing to read when I was three.. or four. I don't remember. We have an audio tape somewhere of my older brother Marcus reading Hop on Pop while I determinedly attempted - to my mother's dismay - to eat the microphone Marcus was reading into.
Some of the stuff I used to read was good stuff - a lot of Dr Seuss (awesome), and those Disney hardcover books... we had at least thirty of them, if not more.
Yeah... when I was six, seven, eight.. Dr Seuss, Disney, Richard Scarry books. I still have four Richard Scarrys in particular - giant red books with bricks drawn on them so the books look like apartment buildings. Lessee (I don't want to try and dig them out, really).. Going Places...
Dammit, there were others. They're downstairs, but getting them out is difficult and I don't wanna do it.
Anyway, what I meant to be getting to is about all those "teen" books. The almost-novels that preteens are in love with; the Sweet Valley Twins, the Goosebumps, the Roald Dahl and the Judy Blume novellas. The 200-page-with-big-print books that make younger kids feel bigger for reading.
**Note: I'm not putting them down - I still have all mine, and am determined to keep them. D:
I claim to be keeping them "in case I have kids," but a number of them I still pick up now and then - some secretly - just to relive that part of my past, I guess. For the Roald Dahls and the Gordan Kormans, it's because they're still good, and sometimes all I want is a quick read that I can go through in less than a day. If I want weeks of reading, I'll pick up Outlander or the Earth's Children series again - neither of which is finished yet, by the way, so of course I'm going to end up reading them all over again when the new books come out. Dammit.
I think, if I ever do have kids, and they're stupid, that I'll have an aneurysm. Brain bubbles. Head explosion.
Laurel's head go boom now.
I've managed to keep all these books (though not the Sesame Street Treasury, which I got at the IGA for ten cents - or a dollar? - each), so if my kids turn out to be dumb, I don't know what I'll do. It just sounds like a terrible waste.
I dunno if that sounds kind of cold or not, but apparently my mom thought the same thing. "What if my kids are dumb?" Lucky for her, we could all read before we went into kindergarten. Marcus more than me, though - I decided when I was small that I was not reading. No way, no how was I going to translate those little marks on the page.
sitting here watching my baby fall asleep, her little kitty head drooping slowly towards the table... i wonder if she knows her face is touching the table now....oop I moved and she jerked awake...
am i weird for having a kitty as my baby? i'd much rather have a kitty than a real baby at this point... less maintenance and they dont cry all night... but sleep on your pillow and purr you to sleep instead
i will never survive without a cat
I wonder how I went from that to this: I can't go for more than a day or two without something, anything to read. Eat cereal in the morning, read the damn cereal box. I think when I was ten I knew most of the ingredients in Frosted Flakes.
Now, when I go camping with my mom, we bring a book for each day, and a couple extras in case we get bored of those, or just feel like something else. I usually bring my books too... meaning, the ones I'm writing. Destroyer, my current fragile brainchild, has taken years to develop and I'm beginning to worry that it's all gone to waste. If nothing else, the Destroyer saga will be a bunch of those 200-page novellas - still good, mind you, just not what I had in mind.
The story is so much more than the one book Destroyer tries to describe. I'm at six books now, just to take in the whole story of this one family, because the background is extensive and keeps on growing, despite my best efforts against it.
I could go on... and on.. but I grow tired and Luna is probably hoping I will go downstairs and offer her a place on the pillow next to my head. she's getting so big... she takes up the whole thing...
So good night and sweet dreams, e2... it is nearly 2 am and I bet I have an hour or two of tossing'n'turning ahead of me, so I better get going.