The Return of The Native

I’m back! I feel so alive! So rejuvenated! I’ve rekindled the passion I have for reading. I used to read all the time – I read almost every spare moment I had in high school. Then I came to college, and that went out the window, replaced by homework, studying, and surfing the internet. I had very little time to read the large novels that had been my primary fodder, and my shortened attention span wouldn’t allow me to read anything of passing interest. Thus, lacking time and deserving books, I let my personal reading fall by the wayside. Don’t get me wrong – I still read. I reread some of the greatest books I know of: all the Harry Potters, The Sevenwaters Trilogy, The Mists of Avalon, Shakespeare’s Comedies, Jane Eyre, Jane Austen’s novels and short stories, The Outlander Series, and The Witch of Blackbird Pond. I even read some new stories – or tried – Villette, The Once and Future King, and others – I tried to read them, and someday I’ll finish them. But it had been so long since I’d come across a book I just couldn’t put down. Then came my birthday, and I received two new books: The Inheritance, by Louisa May Alcott, and The Dark Mirror by Juliet Marillier. It was as if something just fell into place – I read the inheritance that very night and finished it. Then I began The Dark Mirror, and that too I couldn’t put down. Then I began reading Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte, and I was amazed at how much I loved that book – that too, I couldn’t put down. Then I bought Foxmask, another Juliet Marillier book, and it was torture to put that book down. Monday night, I was almost two-thirds done with it, but I could not for the life of me put it down – I read until three that morning just to finish it. That’s almost two thousand pages that I’ve read since my birthday three weeks ago, and it feels wonderful! I didn’t so much read them as devour them, and I’m eager for more. That thirst, that passion that I had for reading is once again ablaze. And after finishing Foxmask, I felt so alive. The thing is, when I read like that, I am entranced and lost within the creative minds of great authors, such that when I emerge, my creative juices are positively raging to get out. I have to write, I have to draw, I have to sing – anything to release the storm within! And once I calm that tempest, I hope I’ll have another series of books to read to build it back up again! Go read something! I've made a new feature - My Favorite Books for each month - check them out!

Full Circle

I had a revelation today. Not a great one; nothing momentous, least ways not to anyone but me. In French class, we were reviewing how to form a question. There are two forms a question can take. The first is a question word (such as Quand, Que, Qui, Où, and so on), followed by "est-ce que" followed by the subject, and then the verb. For example: Qui est-ce que vous êtes? Who are you? (Literally: who is it that you are?) The other form of asking questions is much simpler: question word, verb, hyphen, subject. The first question would become: Qui êtes-vous? Who are you? The inverted order of verb followed by subject is indicative of a question in Spanish, English, and French. As I wrote out several questions for my notes, I remembered that I had encountered this form of questioning, verb-subject, in French, many years ago. In elementary school, before I had any real concept of the English language, I had already learned some of the French. I'm sure you did too. Maybe this will jog your memory:

Frère Jacques, frère Jacques,
Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?

Dormez-vous? Dormez, the formal second-person conjugation of the verb dormer, to sleep, and vous, the formal-second person pronoun: you. Dormez-vous: Are you sleeping? I had known what it meant over ten years ago when I learned the song, but today I realized that I could dissect it grammatically and really understand it. I have never studied French formally, between the time I learned that song and the time I began this semester. I have dallied in French to be sure, watched French films, read a book written completely in French, even created a blog and gave it a French title, but ever since it was introduced into the pattern by a simple song, that particular strand has been an aimless, meandering thread, cast aside to watch while other, perhaps more important threads continued my life's story. But now, that single strand has finally been re-woven into the pattern of my life. I don't know how to describe it: the connection is so amazing to me. It represents a circle of knowledge, how something I learned ten, eleven, twelve years ago finally makes sense. The circle is complete, yet not finished, for a circle has neither end nor beginning. And now I'm getting philosophical. I have known that everything I learn builds on something I learned before, but never has it stood out so boldly as it did today.

My professor (of French) asked me to stay behind and speak with her after class today. I didn't know why, but I hoped she didn't think my good performance in her class owed any aide whatsoever to cheating. She didn't. What she did say was that I was doing excellently in her class and had I been a bit younger, she would have had me be a French major. She really seemed put-out that I was graduating in May and wouldn't be able to major in French, because she said her department needed students like me. That really made my day. Really really. It's not the first time that I've been told this - I was actually pulled out of class by my tenth-grade Spanish teacher so he could tell me that I could go very very far in Spanish, and that I should major in it in college, speak it, even teach it if I wanted. That too made my day. The funny thing: I've never ever been challenged by either Spanish or French. I hope that doesn't make me seem proud and haughty; language seems to come easily to me, and I've never had the need to apply much effort to any foreign language class to succeed. I wonder what would happen if I did.