Reading maketh a full man

I have just completed a selection of tales from the One Thousand and One Nights collection, in the Penguin Classic, Arabian Nights.

I think you can tell a lot about a people by their folklore and the messages they carry and lessons they teach. As a man thinketh, so is he. Suffice it to say that there seems to be an obsession with the latent infidelity of women and jinnees.

I do feel some loose link with Jamaican/West Indian folklore with the stories of Anancy, who is the character to whom cunning has become a second nature and who skillfully applies it to get ahead... but all folklore exist to pass on the wisdom of the forebears to the newer generations.

While reading Arabian Nights, I was more than slightly shocked at the sexual references-especially since the culture has become so conservative. Believe you me, one of the more frequent verbs is "to Mount" and all the conjugations thereof.

I am reading the classics because they are a lot cheaper than the newer hyped up books, the last of which my book mark is still stuck on page 40. It seems many of these newer books are better seen as loose movie treatments than becoming classics in their own right. I can buy four classics for the price of one new book so if you are going to be all hyped up, you better be good because the classics are worth every penny!

The Next Book: Mansfield Park by Jane Austin. I think it relevant especially in the light of my post about my own experience of poverty and class.

Ate, Prayed, Loved and Got Bored

Am I the only one in the universe who is struggling with Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat Pray Love?" I wanted to read it for its supposedly zen like elements that would have been congruent with my current emotional state but I have to say that 44 pages in, it's more than a little disappointing. Please somebody, anybody, explain what is the hype about?

Maybe I am just not the white, mid-thirties American female divorcee who got married early and is looking to find love and meaning in an altered singular state who this book is seemingly pitched to. I kinda got there in my twenties, before marriage and I guess that's the purpose of this entire blog.Is it that for a person who has come to her own spiritual revelations this is a tad shallow and contrived?

I know it's not that this is a non-fiction written person narrative. I just think the voice sounds contrived and pseudo-spritual. Like she is trying too hard to be witty and deep and that takes away from the kind of flow I have when I come upon a good book. When I do come across a book worth reading, I am lifted into a fourth dimension from the first sentence. I should have known better. "I wish Giovanni would kiss me" is not exactly awe inspiring,

The Right to Write

"We should write because it is human nature to write. Writings claims our world. It makes it directly and specifically our own. We should write because humans are spiritual being beings and writing is a powerful form of prayer and meditation, connection us both to own insights and to a higher and deeper level of inner guidance.

We should write because writing brings clarity an passion to the act of living. Writing is sensual, experiential, grounding. We should write because writing is good for the soul. We should write because writing yields us a body of work, a felt path through the world we live in.

We should write, above all, because we are writer, whether we call ourselves that or now."

- Julia Cameron