I've spent a bit of my day today doing what I love to do best, which is sit around and read (and eat) and another bit of it doing something else I love to do best, wandering around in a dustymustysmellslikedistintegratingpaper used book store. I passed over a whole stack of classics that I always pass over, thinking that there are many books there I should read and many that I will probably actually read eventually, but not now. Why do I pass them by if I think both of those things?
The answer to that isn't clear to me, but I quite like how this article makes it ok. The writer writes, "I have not read Wordsworth’s “The Prelude” six times. The first time I did not read it was in an undergraduate class on Romantic literature..."
I certainly can name books I have not read numerous times. Did you know that I also have never seen the movie "Titanic"? And just because I'm the only living American over the age of ten who can honestly claim that, now I'm pretty committed to keeping it that way. If it were playing in a room I entered, I'd likely turn around and walk back out. But it appears I'm not alone - here's Ms Buchanan again:
"By contrast, there’s something beautifully specific about the things we might just as well do but repeatedly and purposefully avoid.... I have never watched “The Tonight Show.” If I walk into a room where it is playing I will walk right out to preserve my perfect record."
Perhaps we'd leave together, and go not read some Wordsworth together.
CWID:
The title of this post is from one of my favorite poems, "Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man" by Ogden Nash. Read the text here or let me email you the mp3 of the man himself reading it; it's fantastic. Also a good option: ask me to recite my impression of the man himself reading it. Also fantastic :)
5 comments:
Not Titanic, not Star War-s, not Schindler's List, although that one belongs to the movies I will watch, but not now.
I have no clue of what Grey's Anatomy is either. The O.C., Law & Order, Lost, Heroes, Jerico, and Californication, belong to that category also.
I'm a dork.
Cecilia has also not see The Wizard of Oz last I checked :)
For the record, this starts down the path of why I chose to keep Kosher - that it's meaningful to me to AVOID doing something, particularly when it's right in front of my face all the time.
I had never been to Taco Bell. I kinda liked it that way. But now I have. so, oh well.
On the TV show "Ed," Ed and his friend would make $10 bets -- once someone offered $10 to do something, the other guy had to do it, because neither had ever lost on one of those bets.
Ed was put in a bind because on one occasion, his friend brought him a sandwich and some potato chips. Ed refused to eat the chips because a long time before, he'd seen a commercial that said "Betcha can't eat just one" of the chips, so he'd bought a bag and ate JUST ONE chip and then thereafter never ate them again, and he would not eat any potato chips of unknown provenance because he wanted to die having eaten just one of those chips.
When he told this to his friend, his friend of course said "10 bucks if you eat a chip," and Ed did it -- having to choose between losing a bet for the first time or eating a chip for the first time.
There's probably meaning in there but really I just wanted to talk about the show "Ed" because I miss it.
Hey - I'd love to have the mp3 - thanks jonfp@wol.co.za
Post a Comment