I am meaning to write more about Isabel Wilkerson’s statement, “the heart is the last frontier” but I am delayed.
Read. Read. Read some more.
When I was 14, my father came home with a box of used books from Shakespeare and Co.* It was summer and my father said, “Here’s something for you to do. Read these books… this is literature. You should know something about American writers.” He picked up Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time and Wright’s Native Son, “these are not considered part of the American literary canon but they will be or should be. You should read them anyway. Because they are great books.” My Dad would suck his breath before his words spilled out. And when he did that, it was his way of saying “This is what is true.” There was no directive except to read.
That is how I came to read Native Son, The House of Seven Gables, The Ox Bow Incident, Giovanni’s Room, The Fire Next Time, Catcher in the Rye, and about 40 other books that summer.
I don’t remember all the books but I have kept this practice of reading close.
The night sky in summer—meteors, the perseids, the milky way. I only know a few constellations. And, the fog rolls in and one can see only gray. But I know/remember there is a reality hidden by the fog.
Reading is a practice. In zen, we study the nature of reality and our relationship to it. Therefore Wright’s “Literature is a struggle over the nature of reality” is part of my own work.
*Shakespeare and Co, at the corner of Dwight and Telegraph was reputedly the oldest bookstore in Berkeley. In 1968, here was not much demand for Americana classics, so they were sold by the pound. This venerable store closed in 2015.