I don't post enough. But now it's exam week, and Friday night (with which I am, typically, not doing anything Friday-night-like with) and I want to practice writing things.

Me darlings, do you ever find that there are stages in your absorption of fiction? For instance, I never used to be able to read long Russian novels, but then, earlier this year, I just picked up Crime and Punishment, and I loved it, and next on my list is either Anna Karenina or The Brothers Karamazov, and I adore Kafka's short stories, and Chekov's (I saw The Seagull not too long ago also, and thought it was pretty cool jazz). Same with Jane Austen. I'm just finishing Mansfield Park.

That's a lot of name-dropping-ey stuff. No good, sounds blowhard-esque, promise it's not and there's a point.

So my point is. So. Well, two points, one an observation. One: has anyone/everyone/someone else noticed that a period of your thinking is really defined by what they/I were reading at the time? Two: it only makes sense that one of the reasons people need fiction (of any kind, this works for other mediums) is because it draws their thoughts to new things. But is it you picking up the book and choosing to read it? Your subconcious picking things for you? I call bullshit, you have little to no idea what's in the book. So is it random happenstance? Probably. Or it could be that the thoughts the book creates/enhances are just thoughts that were already kind of there, or that a book only seems perfect for a certain time in your life and thoughts because the things it makes you think are things you would have thought, eventually, anyways.

Cool.

I wonder how much of what one (I hate the impersonal "you," but "one" seems snobby. Which is worse?) thinks is inborn, how much is there just waiting to actually conciously be thought out, and how much you have to fight for.

Know those thoughts it is necessary to really contemplate before they make any sense, sometimes for years? I guess it is, again, like books: a book you have a lot of trouble reading when you're at a certain age is just the thing you want to read at a different one.

Maturity and thoughts? Next question.

Please forgive me my pondering,
-K