This morning, I wrote in my journal, “Why?”
This afternoon, while sitting in the hot sun, reading Dodie Smith’s novel I Capture the Castle, I got an answer. This book is reminding me of the many functions of great literature; and today it gave me that thrill of self-recognition, the kind that makes me want to grab a pencil and start underlining paragraphs. (Couldn’t do it. It’s a library book.) Here is the passage I wanted to mark:
A year ago, I would have made a poem out of that idea. I tried to, yesterday, but it wasn’t any use. Oh, I could think of lines that rhymed and scanned but that is all they were. I know now that is all my poems ever were, yet I used to feel I could leap over the moon when I had made one up. I miss that rather.
I found the book in the usual roundabout way: having finished one book and getting a little tired of another, I watched a movie, learned it was a book, and hunted it down at my local library. For the moment, I am feeling all my joy in reading restored.
