If You’re Like Me

If you’re like me then you are a reader. 

You’re a reader of articles, of stories, of books and blogs. 

And…if  you’re like me…you don’t just read those articles, stories, books and blogs and cast them aside. No “out of sight out of mind” for you. 

If you’re like me you connect with those stories, articles and books, or, at least the ones you love, the ones that resonated with you, the ones that made you think, the ones you gave up moments of your life to pause and listen through the written word, to the voice of another. For a moment, if you’re like me, you enter the world by invitation of the author and you become one with that world.

If you’re like me you think about the characters.  No, you do more than think about them. With the help of the author you create them, breathe life into them, worry about them when you’re not reading them and you wonder about them as if the story could continue beyond the printed words the author wrote as if in some Inkspell-ish sort of way…if you’re like me. 

If you’re like me, you speculate about the people behind the pen.  Those creators of characters, those wielder of words, those visionaries who craft fantasy the way carpenters craft homes and artists their sculptures with such precision and intricate care.  You meditate after a fashion on these people who communicate so clearly and so deftly so invisibly. You think about them, about their lives, their loves, their sorrows, their existence, even if only for a fleeting moment and you wonder.  What kind of person would it take to write something like that?

If you’re like me you become, in a word, or maybe after many words attached to the invisible artists who’ve helped you create worlds, travel distances and experience lives you might never have known.  Or maybe, you do know the life of which they speak and you are all the more drawn to them because the existence they share is your existence as well.  You know it.  You feel it.  You live it.  And someone chose the words to express it that you yourself could not and you are grateful. 

If you’re like me, then in  a small way, you may even come to love those invisible craftsmen who work their art in black on white, creating entire galaxies where only blank, dead, white space existed before.

If you’re like me,  you wonder what happens when suddenly nothing is heard from them again.  The end of a series of books, the last of the articles, a blog abandoned.  You wonder what happened in the life of that person that ended their existence in print so suddenly…if you’re like me.

If you’re like me, in those respects, and you’ve been reading along here at The Wild Mind  maybe you’ve noticed that where there used to be an almost daily account of distraction, there has been a strange and unusual (at least it has to be for The Wild Mind because look how long her posts usually are!) silence of late. If you’re like me, you would wonder what happened in the real world to shut down the digital world of the person you’d grown somewhat attached to and were reading every so often. 

You would appreciate an explanation…if you are like me.  And you would hope that that explanation did not contain news of abandonment, because if you are like me abandonment in all its many forms never goes over well.  If you’re like me you even hate it when your favorite TV series gets cancelled.  You hated it when you finally finished the Harry Potter Series and you hated it when the Lord of the Rings movies were done. You knew it was the end of the story but somehow you wondered, was it also the end of the author?

You might wonder these things…if you’re like me.