Words

.
..on a page...

.....on a monitor..

What is it about words??

Damnifiknow.

I was fortunate to be raised in a family of readers.....back before TV made of ours a world of visual images....dominated by the boob tube, the silver screen, Pong and video games, Entertainment Tonight...I watched my dad read the Atlanta Constitution, Hoard's Dairyman, Sports Afield and Progressive Farmer. My mom read Readers Digest, Redbook and anything else she could get her hands on. I once found some of her old books from before she married.....Raymond Chandler's Perry Mason, H.P. Lovecraft's horror tales, syrupy romance novels, classics and mind candy, short stories, Hemingway and Encyclopedia Brittanica.

As soon as we could read Run, Spot, Run or Dick and Jane we were off to the public library in Lawrenceville, a one room building set on the Northeast corner of the Courthouse Square, and allowed to check out as many books as we thought we might read during the next week. Some weeks I'd have six to ten and run out before the next trip to town. Black Beauty, The Black Stallion, outdoor adventure books, books on war, Ian Fleming's 007, cartoons in the Sunday edition of The Atlanta Journal...
..Lil' Abner, Snuffy Smith...

....words......I still luv 'em....books don't have commercial breaks every 5 minutes, and no talking head is trying to convince me the world is going to end if we don't pass this or that stimulus package of pork.

Lest I start ranting, I'll just click down a few that caught my eye this evening...
...and while they are almost 2000 years old, still cause the gray matter twix' my ears to clatter and clank together, sending up sparks and puffs of smoke from burning electrical connections.

Who said this??

"What's the matter, mortal
with you,
that you coddle yourself with all this sorrow?
Why moan and wail at death?
If your life's benn happy and blessed,
and all those blessings haven't been poured into a leaky pot
to spill away, with nothing left to give thanks for,
why not, as a man who's feasted full of life,
retire contented - fool - and rest in peace?


There's more, that I'll strain my eyes to see, ere I switch off the light and drop the mask down over my face, and
Sleep