To Dream The Impossible Dream

I am continuing to try and get back into a blogging groove here.  So I apologize for the facile nature of some of these posts. I must just write...

I am a hoarder of books.  A significant portion of my mom's posts on Facebook are of homes stuffed with books and her comment that her son's house is like this...I'm flattered...I think.

I can own a book for many, many years and then pull it off the shelf at the right moment.  For example, earlier this year I read a book by Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination.

Actually, the story behind this book begins with a recommendation made my June Butler at her blog Wounded Bird.  I ordered the book and it sat on one of my many piled tables for a number of months.

Manuel Padilla our missioner made one of his frequent visits to our congregation and told us about a Walter Brueggemann DVD series they were doing at the church in Crystal Falls.  It was rather clear that this six part series must be based on that book I had waiting to be read at home.  I asked Manuel if I might borrow the DVD when they were finished.  Once I had the DVD at hand I also proceeded to read the book.

In an early chapter of the book, Walter references some titles that catch my eye.  In particular, Imagining Argentina by Lawrence Thornton.  He says, "Cavanaugh reflects on the force of liturgic imagination by an appeal to the novel of Lawrence Thornton, Imagining Argentina.  In the novel, the key character, Carlos Rueda, is visited with 'a peculiar miraculous gift,' the capacity to create futures by acts of anticipatory imagination."

Essentially, Carlos dreams alternative realities to the horrors of the dirty war and these dreams come true.  He dreams that those who the government have disappeared are alive and so they are.  More on this in a bit.

So, although I haven't read Imagining Argentina yet, I did pick it up a few weeks back and read the first chapter, scanned the back cover and then looked at other titles by this author.  One title in particular stood out, Under the Gypsy Moon.  As I have said, I have a bit of a book obsession.  Many years ago on one of my splurges, I had purchased a number of hard cover fiction titles from the book store where I was working that had caught my eye.

One of those books has sat unread on my shelves.  Some of the authors I have selected over the years turned out to be "one hit wonders" - well, not even a "hit" necessarily.  This one title in particular I had looked at and almost gave away on a few occasions.  Yes, it was Under the Gypsy Moon, First Edition.  I love when things like that happen.

This past weekend I took down another unread book from my shelves, Susan Wise Bauer's The Well-Educated Mind:  A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had. I began to read the first few chapters and decided that the time was right to follow her program.  Of course, the fact that she mentions Anita Brookner and that I had just had a Brookner book in hand the night before (yes, unread)...gave me the little wink of harmonious "coincidence" that I needed.

And so I have begun a more structured reading of Don Quixote which includes journaling and taking notes.  She also recommends finding a reading partner.  Jim Livingstone is a retired English professor from Northern Michigan University and a member of my very tiny church congregation.  I called him up to see if he was interested only to discover that just this past weekend he was thinking it was time for him to reread, you guessed it, Don Quixote. You may say these are all just bits of coincidence.  I, however, choose to see them as little signals of being on the right path.

So I purchased some pens and journals and sat down to read Don Quixote.  In 2003, Edith Grossman published a newly translated version that was well received.  On a number of occasions I had considered buying the paperback of this edition.  My attempts at curbing my addiction, however, had convinced me to postpone that purchase.  Of course, I was simply delighted when I came across a pristine First Edition at my local bookstore for $9.00!

I am only a few chapters in and already I am wondering about the role of imagination in changing the world...think back to Imagining Argentina.  In my notes I jotted down something said by Carlos Fuentes and quoted on the dust jacket, "Don Quixote is the first modern novel, perhaps the most eternal novel ever written and certainly the fountainhead of European and American fiction:  here we have Gogol and Dostoevsky, Dickens and Nabokov, Borges and Bellow, Stern and Diderot in their genetic nakedness, once more taking to the road with the gentleman and the squire, believing that the world is what we read and discovering that the world reads us."

This idea...that we can alter the world with our imaginings--that we CAN change things on the eve of the 2012 Presidential Election--gives me hope.  Hope to dream the impossible dream.

Peace.