A few years ago I decided to switch my “ponderings” blog to a poetry blog. Now I find myself wanting to ponder again from time to time. I suppose that’s the way we are as human beings, or at least some of us. We live in cycles, seasons. And seasons change in some form or another. So here I am again, a pondering poet. Perhaps my poetry friends won’t be too disappointed that I sometimes feel the need to write long, lumbering paragraphs and maybe others will find something worth reading or thinking about in some of my ramblings.

So here’s my “ponder” for the moment. Someone told me this week that many people were purchasing my novel, not to read, but just because the money goes to fight cancer. She said friends had confided in her that they ‘just don’t read’. I am truly, from the bottom of my heart thankful, that they are making that sacrifice, that they have a heart to make a stand in the fight against cancer. But I am also saddened. Not because they’re not planning to read my book, but because they confessed that they DON’T READ…any books…at all! That’s like knowing how to drive but choosing to always call someone else to come get you when you want to go somewhere.

I can’t imagine my life without books, without imagination, not the kind you get from logging on the internet or watching a youtube video or the kind you get from watching television, but the kind that is born in you as you read a story and those characters become so real as you imagine them. When you read a great story, something marvelous happens, you enter a world that can never exist any other place, your imagination. I fear that real honest-to-God imagination is on the endangered spieces list. Great stories, reading, is what turned me into a writer. I think it may have turned me into an artist. I learned to go places, to see things that I could never see if I depended on the media to do it for me via special effects and news coverage. Yes, reading does require effort, but the rewards are amazing.

However, I’m assuming that if you’re reading this blog you are a reader and therefore, I’m preaching to the choir! So, maybe I should say, “Thank you for being a reader, for engaging your imagination.”