Everyday Canvas

What Lies Within and My Reading

August 25, 2015

My Reading


Prompt: “A person can write the most beautiful, lyrical sentences (as James Patterson will be the first to tell you, he does not), but if the story doesn’t grab a reader by the throat, and—having grabbed on—hold her there, none of the rest may matter all that much.” Joyce Maynard in her article on Patterson --- in Observer
What kind of stories capture your imagination so you may keep on reading?

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Just about everything captures my imagination. I used to think that I only preferred realistic stories and literary works. Lately, however, I have been surprising myself with my choices. I used to think that --although I had enjoyed the stories like The Handmaid’s Tale and A Wrinkle in Time— for me, Sci-Fi and Fantasy were secondary choices.

Now I find myself enjoying well-written stories of werewolves, witches, and other imaginary stuff, just as much as the literary. For example, because the entire Outlander Series by Diana Gabaldon was $1.99 in Amazon, I purchased it out of curiosity. I am reading the third book now and appreciating the way this writer writes. Luckily, I didn’t watch the series on TV, so now I can enjoy and admire the beautiful words, the author’s imagination, and her dedication to keeping the historical facts as facts. Thus, in her stories I have found a great respect for magical realism.

Yet, it is not the genre that captures me and makes me keep on reading. It is the quality of the writing, story construction, and the usage of language, and by that I don’t mean “the most beautiful, lyrical sentences” that clog the storyline. The use of such language is fine when it doesn't cut into the storytelling and pull the reader's attention to a different direction. In this, I agree with Joyce Maynard and James Patterson.

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August 24, 2015

What Lies Within

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
What do you think Emerson means and what do you take from the above quote?

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First, let me point out to one fact, which Emerson didn’t say. In his words, “what lies within us” points to the essence inside us, who we really are; it doesn’t point, in a roundabout way, to the lies within us. Surely, most of us carry lies within us. Lies that others, at one time or another, made us believe are the essence of us. Lies like, “you are as bad as your other parent” or “you can’t hold office; you’re a woman.” To clarify what lies within us, those lies have to be deleted first.

What lies within us is much more important than our experiences in the past or those to come in the future. What lies within is self-generated and needs to be viewed clearly, while what lies behind or before us has to do with the outside of us.

Who we are decides what inspires us or what scares us or what makes us spring to action. Who we are recognizes what will turn our potential energy into a kinetic flow. Who we are gives us permission to act on specific cues or to bring the work we do to its completion or not.

In other words, the source we seek is in us, and once we hold on to that fact, we can move forward with confidence. If we are writing or creating anything, for example, if we can shut out the past and the future and concentrate in what’s in us, explore it, mold it, play with it, the result will be satisfactory if not spectacular.

In short, the gravitational pull of the past and the wishful thinking of the future is meaningless in comparison to the power hidden or acknowledged within us today and always.