In This Room

Sometimes I look into my old books as a dying man looks into the sunset and easily finds himself there. Other times, I turn their pages as might a man with dreams and plans with time and energy enough to realize them. A few moments ago, reading the introduction of a small hardcover published in 1893, a book I read in its entirety several years ago, I felt almost as if it was my mother who was doing the reading, she too having been a lover of libraries, books, and the printed word. And of course I am my mother, just as I am my father, and their mothers and fathers before them. They’re all here in me and with me, even those who had no interest in words and books at all, and who were better suited for other things, some of which they discovered and some of which they did not.

The book in question, for the lovely little detail of it, is A White Umbrella in Mexico, by F. Hopkinson Smith, an artist and writer I’ve mentioned in recent weeks (or is it months?) in connection with two of his other books, namely, In Thackeray’s London and In Dickens’s London — the white umbrella being his shelter from the sun while painting in the streets. All three are books my mother would have loved.

Now, it occurs to me that my opening sentence and the one that immediately follows, can easily be applied to my own writing. Maybe this is to be expected from someone less than a month from his seventieth birthday; at the same time, I can say that these have been characteristics of my writing almost since childhood. I’ve also mentioned elsewhere that my mother told me more than once that I was born old. That she meant it as a compliment says something about her as well. It might even be why she became my mother in the first place. Maybe she heard me in a dream say, I’m here, I’m ready, let’s be friends. And friends we were.

It can be deduced from this that a very small part of what I write is formed on the basis of intention. I may have the intention to write, but that’s almost always as far as it goes. The rest is an unfolding, or blossoming, of whatever is going on inside me and therefore outside as well, and which may have been brewing, so to speak, for days, weeks, months, or years, none of which are really distinguishable when I’m in the process of finding out what needs or wants to be said.

These days, a great deal of emphasis is placed on writing “prompts,” which I can honestly say I’ve always ignored. Being alive, and being engaged in whatever is offered by the moment at hand, has always been prompt enough for me, even when that prompt results in silence, which is often the best and most natural response. In any case, prompts, it seems to me, are, more than anything, a social media gimmick to keep us online and the wheels of commerce turning.

It’s no wonder, then, that I turn to books. My approach is simple. For whatever questions I may have, I seek the answers here in this room. If I don’t find them, I’m willing to look for another book that does. I’m also willing to frame the question differently, or to ask a different question altogether. I ask myself whether the question I’m asking is even worth asking. I also ask why I’m asking it.

Yesterday I was curious about Thoreau, and so I looked him up in my 1892 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica. Sure enough, there he was, followed by notes on further reading — some of which I did, again, right here in this room — no buttons pressed, no advertising flashing in my face, only peace, calm, and satisfaction. What I found were a few highly critical remarks made by James Russell Lowell in 1865 — remarks critical of Transcendentalism, and of Thoreau himself. It was clear by Lowell’s erudite performance that he didn’t really understand Thoreau. This isn’t to say I don’t like Lowell, or that I understand Thoreau; it only goes to show that knowledge, in and of itself, is no substitute for curious, compassionate insight — one more thing I hope to find in this room.

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