Another world

I love getting lost in fiction.
The impossible feats accomplished by somewhat ordinary people. Major characters that always get their happy ending. I started to love the things an author could create within the world of words.

My favorite worlds include:
Xanth
Phase/Proton
Amber
Shannara
Aloria
Discworld
Middle Earth
Westland/ Midlands/ D'Hara and the Old World
Star Wars universe
Lyra's Oxford
Julie's tundra
and Earth, in more ways than one.
I could Travel these worlds with the lick of a fingertip, or a very dextrose thumb.

I've dropped lots of books in the tub, with or without the aid of a shelf. I've dropped crumbs and ink and drink and been mad at myself.Do you know what happens to gummy worms left in a hot car? They melt onto your favorite novel and redecorate the cover of somebody's memoir.

After watching Finding Forrester I don't 'dog-ear' books, and I have traded real bookmarks for gum wrappers, receipts and dollars. Whatever's laying around when I have to pause. It's half the fun to return to a story without a map and rekindle the journey and see what marker guides my path.

Thank you authors,
Thank you for stories.
Thank you for morals,
And mischief soon sorted.
Thank you for people I can oft relate to

Thank you for accents and names I cannot pronounce.
Thank you for centaurs, lovers, dwarves, heros and cats.
Thank you Terry's for all your wonderful detail.
Thank you Initials (A.C., P.J., C.S., J.R.R.) for talking.

I've left out some that I know I have loved,
Not out of spite, but a simple mind now done.
I've many talents I'm sure but my favorite is this one,
To forget enough detail and love repetition.
For this means I love your books, not once and then never,
But over and over, find new reasons to smell the leather.

In waking I dream of fiction,
In dreams I live with non.
With my words I live my life,
With printed words I see yours.

Thank you for giving me my heart back,
My imagination and humor some company and silence.
Anticipation, discovery, knowledge and meaning.
Thank you for leaving some things unspoken, and hidden.

My books may have broken spines and they have have writing in the margins. I've fallen asleep more nights with a book in my hand, under my pillow, or lost in the covers; that 20yrs of marriage will have to work hard to reach the same number.

I can travel in movies and some made from books are a wonder. Like books, movies have a certain 'author'. They tell a story and have a lot to offer. But they don't let you create. You see people reading in many a television program, but do you hear of an author describe a movie in his prose? Will you

read

about some guy sitting, snacking on Dorito's while watching Seventh Heaven. No

Movies are grand, they tease the senses
But books...
((sigh))

The creation doesn't stop after production and distribution.
The door has merely opened for your mind to run through it.
That's why I cherish my books. The old and the young. From Julius the Baby of the World to the Iliad (which I still haven't read). They'll teach me something, every time I read them.

Because each time I return to the authors' words, I'm a new artist looking at the same paints in a drawer. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I hold the paintbrush once more.