A few weeks ago I was introduced to the power of reading writing aloud.
Late at night, I went to get some orange juice from the fridge. As the door slammed I noticed the poem cut from what looked like a magazine, sloppily taped to the door.
I read it, and it was boring. Maybe I was too distracted by my orange juice that was losing its cold and crispness, or maybe I just wasn't in the mood to read a poem. Sometimes you aren't; I've learned that that's completely normal.
Walking into my family room I saw my dad blogging on his computer, and I saw me, drinking my orange juice. And there was this emptiness inside of me, this feeling of regret. I kept imagining myself really, really, really reading that poem. I wish I could go back in time and really, really, really read it. Then I would come back into the family room and maybe feel a little different, a little more whole. But instead, for some unknown reason, because I hadn't read the poem and am a very guilty person, I felt like I was only half of what I normally am. I felt like I was missing something.
"Did you see that poem I taped to the fridge? I was thinking of you when I read it." I breathed the biggest sigh of relief I have ever sighed in my entire life. My dad, the hero. "Why don't you go get it, and read it!"
Gladly. Thank goodness.
My foot steps glided across the tiles in my kitchen and I couldn't wait to find my missing piece. I knew what was coming of this. I knew my father and I were going to end up talking about the poem, and then sitting in awe just living it. Inhaling the beautiful words and sitting there loving every bit of it.
Not exactly.
I took the poem in my hands so gently I could barely feel it and it could barely feel me. Though I could also feel in my hands how rough I was being, how much I rushed into the family room, waiting to find my missing piece.
So I sat on the white couch and I read it in my head, loving that I knew my dad was watching me the whole time.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing came out of that poem. I tried to love it, I wanted to love it. But. I just didn't understand it. And because the moment was already so perfect, and I felt so safe and comfortable, it was easy to admit to my dad that I had no clue what any of the words meant.
My dad is always trying to get me to think. He'll never just give you the answer, he makes you think about it. He wants to hear you give the answer before he does himself.
"Read it out loud."
I didn't realize my voice was shaking as I read the words. They overwhelmed me; and as I felt them coming out of my mouth and heard them swimming in my ears and I realized something I should have realized the two times I read the poem on my own.
You need to
feel what you are reading. You need to
feel what you are thinking. You need to
feel what you are living and being because in that moment, and in any moment that you read words, you are those words. Only a true writer can make you feel like you are becoming the words, that you are being spoken to by the author.
But the most important thing I learned that night was that it's okay to read out loud. I could have read the poem I saw on the fridge out loud, but I was too self conscious to do it. In my own home, too. I was too scared that someone would come in and say, "Um, what are you doing?" In a mean way. Or I would wake some one up by mistake. But really, the only thing that would happen, if someone just so happened to have been walking by, because you don't have to read very loud, would be that they would just look at you lovingly and think to themselves, "Wow. What a good kid that is. Reading a poem to herself when she could be doing something totally different."
I learned that night that you just have to go with it, live in the moment, do what you have to do to keep a piece of yourself from going missing. If you have the urge to read a poem, to stop and really read it, even if it's out loud, then do it! Have fun. And that way, when you're sitting around with nothing else to do, when you could be sitting there having just read the poem and now thinking about it, you won't have to feel that awful emptiness of regret that I did.
Nothing Else by Charles Simic
Friends of the small hours of the night:
Stub of a pencil, small notebook,
Reading lamp on the table,
Making me welcome in your circle of light.
I care little the house is dark and cold
With you sharing my absorption
In this book in which now and then a sentence
Is worth repeating again in a whisper.
Without you, there’d be only my pale face
Reflected in the black windowpane,
And the bare trees and deep snow
Waiting for me out there in the dark.
Basically saying, sometimes, we're lonely. Sometimes, writers are lonely. Sometimes, when everyone is asleep and it's just us writers waiting alone in the dark, all we have is our pencil, notebook, and lamp. And sometimes, that has to be enough to make you feel at home.
And we walk the streets. And the wind, it smacks our faces.
