Okay, it's now 2am, I have work in 3 hours and I can't sleep. It's bloody boiling in this house and I got an idea for a post stuck in my head, so here I am, sitting in front of the compy in my Pajamas trying to convince myself I don't really need sleep after all.
So, I was reading a book and in it it was describing a character from the point of view of another. Saying what the young man had gained from his parents and what other qualities could be seen in him. Everyone has those moments, when someone will look at you and make a comment that links you back to your family. With me it was always "you have your fathers smile" and "you have your mothers eyes" But strangely enough, one of the comment I remember best has nothing to do with looking like my parents.
We were visiting my aunt and uncle and I had retreated from the noise that was 2 older brothers and 6 male cousins in the house by curling up in a corner with a book. And at one point my uncle came looking for me, aparently he stood in front of me for 5 minutes calling me before I looked up. When I did, all he did was smile and say "you're just like your mum, losing yourself in a book and pretending the rest of the world dissappears." A couple months later at Christmas he gave me a stack of some of his favourite books, among them a copy of Hamlet, his favourite shakespeare.
I still think that books and stories are some of the best escapes from life. You can lose yourself in culture and art and the intrigues of lives not your own again and again and gain something from it every time. I still squee like a little girl when a new book I've been waiting for comes out, and I still sniffle a bit when Aslan dies and Frodo stands at the peak of Mount Doom. That's why I love history so much, it's all stories and lost worlds, places lost to other armies and the ravages of time and names and tales that have survived the ages. A teacher once told me that you could never waste time by reading a book, only make it so time no longer mattered.
Okay, enough of the tired rantings of a sleep deprived mind.
Meru at 1:29 PM