House of Books

Yesterday I visited my grandparents' house in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. They live in a farmhouse that is over a century old with two barns, an enormous vegetable garden, eight cats, a couple kittens and two very enthusiastic dogs. This was my first real visit in about 10 years.
In this house the walls are made of books, the fire roars in winter, and art covers all spaces where books are not. Floors creak and there are gravestones holding up the water pump in the basement. And not a thing had changed since my last visit when I was thirteen years old--except my grandparents themselves. My grandaddy is frail, in his own world. My grandmamma is concerned with feeding us. Both are intelligent, sharp witted and adore each other. I see my father and his five siblings growing up in this house, curling up in the many corners with blankets to read, painting in the dining room, sewing in the hallway.
Growing up, there was an extremely strong emphasis placed on reading. For every birthday and Christmas we were given books...on my fifth grade birthday I received a first edition copy of Wuthering Heights.
Oddly, I never thought about the connection between my grandparents and my love of reading.

Driving in the car with my aunt later that evening we were discussing a new person in our family. She said to me, "I am concerned about him because he does not read books." I laughed. How strange! A lack of reading is a major character flaw? And yet, I kind of agree. After all, people who don't read don't seem to hold my attention for long.

Lost Art

So I have a problem:
William Gass.

William Gass' book The Tests of time has forced me, beyond my expectations, to re-evaluate the way I look at the practice of writing. Indeed, as a former Waldorf child, I do value the art of writing: the sound of fountain pen against paper, the liner under my blank white sheet so that I write straight, the constant smell of white-out, and the feeling of satisfaction after completing an entire dictation without messing up once...and thus I feel bizarre writing my thoughts on a keyboard. I read the beautiful sentences that Gass has composed, and I cannot help but obey his pleas. Where did the personality of our sentences go? Times New Roman eats the flavor of our words, spitting them back at us like pre-chewed food for the masses (His image). Suddenly I am torn--I love my blog and the instant beauty I can achieve with the sameness of the type and I also hate this sameness, the polished and mediocrity of my pre-made template picked from 8 or so others when I signed up.

And what am I to do? Write my thoughts and scan them, somehow, in order to keep my small chunk of cyberspace? Let it go? Or delete everything and pretend Amaranthine never existed (and a part of me loves the irony of that).

I do realize that Gass' book is exactly what he was preaching against in that particular essay. And I do realize that this is the age of internet communication and I am simply doing what others are doing. But I crave subversion! This feels like dead air and broken windows. How can I make my empty house occupied? Or at least haunted...