I'll tell you what is NOT fun, and that is having to put glasses on to read now! Oh my goodness, it's official, I'm middle-aged. (Laughing) That means I'll live to be around 120 so there's that. I finally have to wear reading glasses. I actually have a prescription and a pair of "real" glasses, but the prescription is literally something like .50, and my optometrist sort of chuckled when he wrote out the Rx for me to take to the front of his office where I very proudly picked out the rims of my first ever pair of real glasses. I don't wear them because they have a bifocal. I didn't realize what he was saying when he described it to me. The way the bifocal works is that I have to be looking down to use the reading portion of my lens and I hold my book at eye level, so that didn't work for me. I went to the local drugstore and bought a pair of 100 readers and I'm good.
I could have sworn, but I would have been wrong, that the average book is written in 12 font. It isn't. It is written in 11 font. You wouldn't think that would make a huge difference and I guess really it may not, but it makes just enough of a difference to me that the words are rather blurry and I can't tell the f's from t's or the u's from v's. It's annoying. My brain functions correctly, so it throws all the characters in the mix and comes up with the right words, but that does take an extra step of braining it and there are times when seriously, I don't really want to brain much. I just want to read.
With me, it's all about the words. I write them. I type them. I read them. I create them, and I even dream about them. I was working today and out of NOWHERE, a very romantic and quite intimately suggestive poem popped right between my eyes on the inside of my skull. I had no other choice but to stop my employment duties for a minute and quickly jot down the words that were feverously cascading through the folds of my imagination. I'd tell you what I thought, but I'm not finished with it yet and I don't want to spoil the process.
I decided (because I do that) that I would start reading more classic books from Scottish authors and by Scottish authors, I am not just limiting my selection to Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson. I could and will include J.K. Rowling only because she lived in Edinburgh for 21+ years as an adult and wrote her books there in the city under the rainswept skies of my favorite city. I am also buying books whose authors include (but are not limited to) Kenneth Grahame, Josephine Tey, Sir Arthur Conan, George MacDonald, and one of my favorite people, Alan Cumming. There are hundreds of authors of course, and thousands of books to read, but I am "hankering" as they say, to learn more from those I feel a connection with. You really don't get more connected to me than through murder and forensics, and when I learned at the age of a young teen that Sir Arthur Conan was Scottish, I flipped!! I could not have been happier.
To say I've read every book Conan has ever written would be false, but I have dipped into that well a great number of times. I'm too excited to finish Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Strange Tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". Most people just say "Jekyll and Hyde" and I'd suspect that they haven't actually read it. They may have seen a video, watching a play, or maybe an old film. This book is chock full of great vocabulary and imagery. I recently found the origin of the book and why RLS wrote it in the first place. The book is not long. It is exhaustive really, but it's not long. You can read the book in one afternoon if you have only a few distractions. I prefer to take my time, but this book seems to grab you by the throat, pin you to the chair, and keep you there. I literally had to pull myself away from it tonight. I have things I must do!
To find out, to read and learn, that RLS was a sick man when he wrote the book is really very telling. He was so completely obsessed with the real-life character called Deacon Brodie, for whom he created the two opposing characters for the book. Brodie was in fact a madman, a deviant, an addict, a thief, possibly a murderer, and he was also, as the tale would hold, a gentleman, a fine and upstanding and well respected local businessman on the Royal Mile of Edinburgh. CRAZY truth and the overwhelming personal self-inflicted torture that Robert Louis Stevenson immersed himself into in order to write the book are just astonishing! Well worth the read of the book as well as studying the background! You can't make this stuff up, folks. It happened.
For me, writing is my first love, but reading is my second. I'd say my side thing, but that has a bad connotation doesn't it? I mean, writing and reading are sort of like twins or besties and you can hang out with both of them at the same time without either of them becoming jealous of your time. I liken it to having two horses of different sizes, colors, disciplines, and strengths. Neither horse really gives a hoot if you pet the other for a while as long as you pay some attention to them too. No one hopes the other dies a horrible bloody and painful death - - that's me. I'm the one writing, researching, investigating, and drafting someone's horrible bloody, and painful death, and I do that through reading what others have written, and I write what I write. (If someone reads my words and is likewise inspired, the wheels on the bus keep going round and round!)
Tonight it was Bob. Robert Louis Stevenson. Tomorrow it's Walt. Sir Walter Scott; but I'm not reading his classic novels or even the lesser-known books. NOPE, I am reading a book titled "Demonology and Witchcraft" What? It's almost Halloween, and I wanted to see if this was a novel or a documentary. I have no idea. I just saw it on Amazon and bought it. "Rob Roy" is after that. Believe it or not, I had NO IDEA that Sir Walter Scott wrote it, and no, I've not read the book. I've only seen the movies and videos. I need to read the book!! I should put another author in between, but I am waiting on those books to arrive. The Edinburgh Boys is what I'll be calling my authors soon. Sir Walter Scott, RSL, Sir Arthur Conan, Kenneth Grahame, and I suppose I can add Philosopher David Hume to that group. He's not my favorite by any means, but he did hail from the City Centre area and I've got a soft spot for anyone who walked the Meadows, climbed Arthur's Seat, and perhaps watched a hanging or two by the old Canongate Tolbooth.
Another story or two and then I'll let you go. There are a pair of murderers known through Scottish folklore and history as graverobbers, though they never robbed a single grave. They murdered 17 people in Edinburgh, then sold their bodies to the attending professor of medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Stories of Burke and Hare abound, and they too are fun to read. Another interesting and sorrowful twist to the overwhelmingly gruesome history of that city is the many tales written and told the more than 300 would-be witches who were hung, and in my opinion, murdered, by the townspeople and the established lawmakers of the day. Such a tragic and terrible time. The stores around the town pay homage to the ladies mainly to sell tidbits for souvenirs, but these were real lives. These were real people who were hung for the slightest of reasons. Hanging was not the only way(s) these women were executed. I can't say I read these stories or books for fun, but for understanding. I want to learn. I want to know. I want to feel. I want to pray that I could nor would ever harm someone just because I disagreed with them.
Reading is the key to unlocking so many doors from the past, the present, and of course, the future. It assists with connecting the dots. It creates those dots too. It brings to life the images and representations of reality and fantasy. Sometimes we can't tell the difference between the two! Watching a movie can reiterate for me what I read, but I read to really know. I read to really comprehend. I read because there are times I can't stomach visually viewing gory grotesque images, but I can read or write about them in minute detail. I have no idea why that is. I just know that reading and seeing the words brings the story to my soul. I read because it is my breath.
Canongate Tolbooth. Photo Credit: Dreamstime.com
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