The mysterious beauty of reading

 

 

I came late into reading. My early years were spent in San Isidro, a suburb of Lima, Peru. Loved by my family and my niñera  Teresa,  I lived an a world of imagination and play. School was just an interruption within my day. No pressure was put upon and even in the school setting, I only remember the gentleness of a young nun, guiding me through lessons. There were little ribbons handed out for good behavior and such. I remember being fascinated by the colors and the sheen of the satin. 

My eyes were hungry little hunters, always on the prowl for the next saturated color or shimmering reflection of light. Most of my early memories are of indigo dusk shaded streets , white stucco walls lit up and hosting the graceful shadows of large leaves and dancing birds and the cornflower blue skies of the Andes mountains under which the native women worked their looms, layering each richly pigmented stripe, one after another. Later in my life, I recognized the very pattern in my early paintings. All these years such images lay resting and waiting to be recreated, reinterpreted, all at once becoming a part of me, unexpected yet upon recognition, welcomed.

 

Oh yes... back to reading... I was just getting the knack of reading when I was about 6 or 7. I remember driving around with my parents and excitedly reading out loud any signs speeding past. "Coca Cola"! "El Lobo del Mar"! "El Pollo Loco"! We all laughed and celebrated my newfound skill.

It was not until we immigrated to the US that we realized how far behind I had fallen academically. My father had recently died and we were starting a new life in Manhattan. I don't remember reading any age appropriate books. I could read well enough to understand my lessons but when it came to crack the spine of any book, especially the bland fare offered at school, I just couldn't be bothered.

That all changed after I stumbled upon James Hilton's Lost Horizon. I imagine it was the cover that caught my eye. 

 

 Snow covered mountains, a small band of tiny people in colorful silks forging ahead in the snow. How it caught my imagination!

From that moment on I became an avid and discerning reader. I was drawn to the classics such as the Bronte sisters and the works of  Dickens. Having reread such books in adulthood, I realized that in my youth, I had missed many references and themes. I think what I was (and still am) enjoying was the mental journey such books took me on. I was transported from my tiny Manhattan apartment to the grandeur of the Himalayas, escaping even to the bleak and dangerous Yorkshire moors. A well written book carries that magic within it's pages. It becomes a portal and coupled with the reader's imagination and what life experience they already have stored within memory, a powerful journey is there for the asking. Each page carries it's own geography, climate, architecture, life and blood. Unlike a movie that will take you away for a couple of hours, a good book can stay with you for days, even weeks. They become old friends that carry not just the story they have shared with us but in our reading, in our our listening, we have woven a new story. 

Where were we when we read such words?

 What was happening when we finished that chapter?

 The words read become one with us and coupled with the blood of our life experiences, something new is created. The book has changed as much as we have  in our communion with it. Words, like us, are living and breathing and as we grow in heart, mind and spirit our experience changes with each page. 

My old friend has traveled far and wide with me and remains a steadfast reminder of the power of our imagination.