Thursday, September 15, 2011

Literary Lozenges

This morning I woke up several hours too early, with unsettled thoughts and unrested muscles. Rolling over (and over) did little to invite sleep, and between a low fever and a cautious cough I was feeling sick enough to be distinctly uncomfortable.
I'm sure you know the feeling.

Past remedies have included soothing music, steaming hot-chocolate, and soft couches (not to mention actual medication that I might choose to take). However, the fading starlight of pre-dawn and the cold-induced insomnia begged a different recourse. I picked up a book.

Reading there on the couch reminded me of countless other times when, feeling under the weather, I had curled up in my sheets with a tale of once-upon-a-time. If I was home sick from school and unfit for anything more strenuous than old recordings of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, I often found release (or commisseration?) in a story that I could hold as close as I wanted but was bigger than any binding.

Today's choice was an old favorite that I have wanted to re-read. More than the book itself, though, the act of reading (or maybe even the memory of reading) soothed me more fully and effectively than I could have expected. Thoughts calmed, coughs subsided, sweating ceased, and I was left to greet the sunrise. Still with a cold, but also with a friend. And with a precious reminder of the beauty of prose, the power of books.

New Policy

One reason I haven't been posting recently is that the thoughts I've been thinking haven't fallen into poetic form very easily, so the poems I've started on have felt very forced.
(Other reasons, of the school-is-getting-busy and I-just-got-engaged variety may also be contributing factors to the lack of blog activity.)
So my decision is to shift to a little more of the Just Blogging variety of posts where I'll write what I'm thinking whether it sounds good or not. I'll throw poems in as they come along,  but I think this more freeform standard will help me to write productively.

So get ready for thoughts and musings untouched by Muse or over-thinking.