Print: Why I Read

A book is a ravine in the fingerprint of the human conscience. Not only do books record the thoughts of man, but they provide shelter—an insightful distraction—from the readers’ struggles.

Like dampened red earth, a book’s words shape a landscape to be viewed under the eyes of the beholder. The conditions of the journey are painted by the reader. Thoreau states in “Walden” that he “went to the woods because [he] wished to lived deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if [he] could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when [he] came to die, discover that [he] had not lived”. I sometimes descend into the canyon in times of struggle, to face “only the essential facts of life.” “Walden” laid out a map that helped me better question the habits of daily life, and ponder on my own level of satisfaction and appreciation. I trekked the chapter “Where I Lived and What I Lived For” for the first time in my high school English class. My hands firmly grasping the Bible-thin pages to support its spine, my Norton Anthology was like a face I could open to access the courage needed to actively confront my own thoughts. When reading I did not have to be passive to suppress the feelings of despair. I could disagree, say how I felt back, and not be as afraid to get damaged any more emotionally. During this time last year—my first year away from home—I was a book to my mother, a place she could go when she had no one to talk to. My dad, although not officially diagnosed, has post-traumatic stress disorder. He is still my world, but in times there are earthquakes and avalanches that take place due to his old scars of battle, both from an impoverished, abusive childhood, and from war.

One Saturday, when visiting home, there was a verbal eruption. He grabbed the truck keys on the metal rack in the kitchen. My dad walked out the door. The verbal snap, the explosion, sent shock waves through my body. I was weak. I could not stay to have my pages read by my mom, to look upon my sister’s face, to answer the questions of a five year-old brother. I ran into the woods across the street from my house, only to come back an hour later with my hair dripping wet from the rain.

The drops from my eyes blended with the tears of the sky, and both fell onto my pages of “Walden” while I was curled up with my dolphin pillow-pet in my old room. I read to stay busy. Staying busy was a way to cope; doing homework was a subtle form to venture away and reflect. I could not speak of what haunted me like my mother did to me during those few months when his outbursts were often and I was away. Rather, within the lines of “Walden,” I read, “Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars.” From in-between the words of Thoreau, the stream cleansed my eyes from the dust. Time is always passing, life is ever-changing. This particular instance of the cursing, the slamming door, the start of the engine, was a pebble that will not be touched by the same section of the current again. The ripples would not steer me off course. I could take sips of the stream, realizing some would be sourer than others, and recognize that all drinks of feeling and emotion are necessary to experience life deliberately and fully. I must know pain to appreciate pleasure.

The same water flows through my veins. It gave, and still gives me the strength to march forward with my head held high. Returning from the canyon to the bedroom of a once teenage girl, the trail has been momentarily cleared. Although now at times I worry what distance will do to the relation I have with my mom as the years go by, I choose to savor the current sweetness of the stream. My parents are strong. My dad continually battles to control the pain of a broken body and the unintentional rage that tears apart through guilt, which rips the rest of us through fear and sorrow. Yet we are supportive, and most importantly, together—a luxury we have not always had. Perhaps the distance will give me courage to take both of my parents to Walden Pond when they next visit me, to get our feet wet, and smile while the sun blazes high in the sky full of eternal stars.

Yet I know I will strive to follow the ridges of my own fingerprint, only to value the words of the past, but not get lost within them. Books rest on nearby shelves. I climb forth on solid grounds. The water is still flowing, pebbles are still untouched.

Karaghen Hudson ‘18 lives in Mather House. Her column appears on alternate Mondays.