Monday Moment - NOTICE!

A couple days ago I got around to doing two things that I'd been meaning to do for some time. And now I wish I'd gotten to them sooner. But as a dear mentor of mine used to say, "If you'd have known better, you'd have done better. Next time."

The first thing I got to was reading in a book called Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose. (Don't you just love that her name is Prose?) On the recommendation of a man in my writers group, I picked up this book over a month ago, but I hadn't yet read anything from it. On Friday I took the opportunity to occupy my mind while my hair turned a different color - Reading Like a Writer helped me fill some otherwise unspoken-for time.

Now I know that this is a book I want to read s-l-o-w-l-y - which is not generally my style. Usually, I devour books with the same immoderation I show for chocolate. I am always in a fever to know what happens next, and often can't rest till I close the back cover.

Francine (I just can't call her Prose without giggling) recommends a different way of reading. She calls it 'close reading', which honors an author's choice of words by paying attention to each and every one. What an interesting revelation. For me, the message has been - in capital letters - NOTICE!

On the heels of Francine's admonition to pay attention, I chose this weekend to catch up on my Reading Journal. You can imagine that if I devour books but don't much like paperwork, my goal of recording the books I read - and capturing the gems within - can pile up on me. It's a goal that has big rewards as I find that the physical act of writing about a book helps me remember that I have, in fact, read it.

And I learned this weekend that when I've taken the time to mark a telling passage with a sticky note and then set down that passage in my Reading Journal - I am 'close reading' in a way that lets me own rather than just rent the author's words. Wow! Here was a heart-pounding, mind-jumping revelation!

It helped that sticky notes crowded the pages of Charles Frazier's Thirteen Moons . Such words that man can choose! I couldn't always remember exactly why a line, a paragraph, or a page moved me two or three months ago when I read them - until I began to record them in my Readers Journal. Then, the unfamiliar act of cursive writing pulled me to ponder every word and how it connected to every other word - and holy cow, those words mesmerized me!

I NOTICED!

Which has led me to consider all the things in my life that I habitually fail to notice. The jolt of one color juxtaposed upon another, 'the delicate, thin curve of a new moon in spring' (Walt Whitman's words that I have written frequently enough to own them for my own and observed for myself while walking across the asphalt marina of my local grocer), the rush of wind hitting me square in the face that calms in my perception when I do nothing more than turn my head, the words that spring into my own head when I take the time and demand my mind's presence to NOTICE!

So with my awareness temporarily heightened, I'm determined to NOTICE more - and with more diligence. And to continue reading Francine Prose to see what else she has to teach me about reading, writing, and living well!