How To Explore?

Few years ago I didn't know "borges" or "ballard" or "le guin" or on art form called "veduta" or the word "avant la lettre" or the woolly pig "mangalitsa". Remember, the woolly pig is the cutest and demanding in that list. I exhibited a fancy and idleness to start with. I want to explore something but had no idea where and how to embark on that pipe dream.

Yes, I shall read! I took up reading. I think it was Elizabeth Taylor who once explained her compulsion for multiple marriages. She believed "marriage" to be consequential of "love". When she fell in love, she persisted to marry the man. Similarly, I reasoned that when you find a magnificent book, you immediately have to claim and read it. How wrong I was, as Taylor was, which she admitted in her later interview. You don't have to 'read' every great book but 'know' them. But how do you know them in a way of reading them?

I ran into timely guides in my life as waypoints who nurtured me in this process. However, I empathise with the pain and perplexity alike in not having one. You need external gestures to jump start your enthusiastic drive which in no time builds into a self-sustained faculty of curiosity and wonder.

Today, I am sharing ...'how to explore'.

Back to books. There is a deluge of unmissable, award-winning, genre-defying books in the market. You cannot possibly read even five of them in your lifetime without skipping your favourite show on Netflix. Again, favourite shows are more important than books. Trust me on that one. You don't have to read them, as I said, though you must know them.

Yesterday I discovered a startling bookshelf in goodreads: commodity history

I know, isn't that a gem of a find. After you have exhausted away in selecting all the books you want to read in that list, er, which may be a combined upwards of 8k pages, your excitement is deflated. How will you ever read these books? You may not. Tip: You seek the stalking horse of the book. Eh, what?

The story/theme behind acclaimed non-fiction usually pops up as a long-read essay in media or university magazine. Seek that germinal essay and read it instead. Writers play out their ideas initially in a stalking horse to ascertain public interest or publisher's attention or evaluate their own fancy, which later is developed into a full-blown book.

Pick that "Why did the chicken cross the world" book. Search for essays of Andrew Lawler and voila.
The book Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil spills into the blog.

Isn't it worthwhile composing a byzantine post in Ira's style to reveal a simple technique to you? You might scowl that the pretentious technique is neither unique nor original but common sense which brings us to the coda of this post.

I reflected last night, what do these genre books, or literary material in general, mean? Is it knowledge or facts or gratification or affectation? To me, it's common sense. We read because we want to enrich our common sense than distend our sagacious aspirations and we lack common sense to hoard more common sense.

Don't be daunted henceforth. You don't have to flip each page in all the looming tomes to extract the pleasure and scholarship of beneficial reads. Occasionally, treat yourself to a facile and toothy grin -- ah! I don't know the narrative but I grasp the background and the thoughts in the writings of Barbara Tuchman, Tom Mueller, Mark Kurlansky, Stephen Ambrose and their like.

Tell me again, why this post? Because I don't know the transitional phase in life of those befuddled and skunking Iras out there and even if one of them is in a phase charged with passion and burning in commitment but has no clue what and where she should stray into, I just want to hold her and give her hope and convey to her that I -Ira have been there and you-Ira will get here one day.

 

When I was a child, I was glued like a weaning shoat to a programme on Doordarshan about farming and animal husbandry. Less of farming but more of animal husbandry. Less of husbandry but more selectively of pig rearing. I used to love those wallowing and dumpy pigs in mud slush. Don't forward to pigs stripped to pork, but watch them alive and lurching on the farm with their droopy ears and merry grunts. And call out Mangalitsa, also known as Mangalica! Endlesshope, the mangalized name itself is so adobs!

My letters to Santa were always a request for a pig, not a well-mannered and clean pig but a roguish and grimy pig, with promises to take care of it like it were my own sweat and wart. If I had know about Manga, I would have insisted only on this fleecy pig for Christmas.

Agent Hope, you were assigned to smuggle the debris of Roswell UFO. Now you report back with a yurt under starry night. I am having doubts on this mission and the competence of my dispatched team.