about reading feelings

There is this thing that happens to me when I read a beautiful poem or story or line, and it is a feeling that feels like falling in love.  My selfishness goes away, I am filled with admiration,  I think I might be capable of floating up from my seat into the stars, I am made a better person who wants to go and expand my life in this world just to keep up with this beautiful thing I've just read.

It's like love in that it is like possibility - it's the feeling like you are starting to live out a dream that was prepared for you.  A good story makes me unafraid of the world.  I am reminded of the fortitude of beauty and sincerity.  I am reminded that it is nailed down in thousands of pages and that it is keepable.  And when I read words that make me feel like this, I feel this urgent longing to pull out of myself all the language I have inside, and to rearrange them into things of beauty.  I take the greatest pride in being a writer when I am reading the gorgeous things other writers have made.

My dear roomie Rachel just finished a book called "Hannah Coulter" by Wendell Berry.  If you have never read him, please do.  I am growing into the deepest admiration and affection for that man's words.  Rach left the book on the coffee table the other day, and I picked it up and started reading and it was like stumbling upon a beautiful and shining gem.  I am transfixed.

I wanted to share just this little blurb below because it gave me all those beautiful reading-feelings. If you need me you can find me floating up with the fireflies then off into the stars.

"Sometimes too I could see that love is a great room with a lot of doors, where we are invited to knock and come in.  Though it contains the world, the sun, moon, and stars, it is so small as to be also in our hearts.  It is in the hearts of those who choose to come in.  Some do not come in.  Some may stay out forever.  Some come in together and leave separately.  Some come in and stay, until they die, and after."