Once in a while, life doesn't feel all that great.
Whatever it may be, your left feeling confused, short of breath, jumbled up inside, to a point in which the thoughts inside your head feel like one gigantic run-on sentence. In moments like these, I can only take refuge in one simple yet inevitably remedial process…reading. The way in which chanting to a rosary can soothe the pious; words have always been my source of cathartic release.
Escapism is what it’s called – an escape from banality, an escape from some overwhelming and usually unnecessary feeling, an escape from daily life, plain and simply an escape from reality. My vehicle for escapism is thankfully the world’s most accessible and simple fix - literature. I devour fiction with the same reckless abandon that adrenaline junkies employ when developing their taste for a certain “high” – usually completely unconscious of the time of day or the appropriateness of my actions (yes, I have attempted to read a book while taking a shower); what do I find so irresistible? Well, obviously the words.
I’ll let you in on a little secret: Prose is Poetry. Story telling is an art, and it’s the kind of art that any kind of person can understand and connect to. There’s something about a continuous stream of words, decorated with decorum, (the periods, the commas, the apostrophes, the exclamation marks and the question marks) tip taping on your tongue melodiously while simultaneously metamorphosing together into meaning and purpose…that well, turns me on.
I’m currently revisiting Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Although Alcott’s novel is a simple one, its messages about gender, poverty, and happiness transcend that of much more complex and stylistically revered novels. It’s a union of so many important lessons in life, and written in a format that ten-year old girls can appreciate, understand, and use as a guidebook to unselfish living – which is ultimately happy living.
Alcott, through the trials and tribulations of her characters, Mr. and Mrs. March, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy – tells a simple and beautiful story of the importance of family, the importance of hard work and strong ethic, and most significantly what it means to be a woman. With every page, I feel as though young Jo has manifested herself right out of the novel, and taught me the basic yet crucial criteria to what Maya Angelou would call a “Phenomenal Woman”.
