The mermaids are singing their sweet siren song

I’ll linger here briefly I won’t stay for long

The seas surge forever the mountains stand strong

No matter how deeply how could I swim wrong?

     Oh for sweet sanity’s sake

     I must leave certain dreams in my wake

No, not any of these books, well not particularly, well not yet, well, I don’t really know. These are the books by my bed which are patiently awaiting my binge watching to die down again. The Books I Don’t Agree With are tucked away on my Device waiting to sneak into my consciousness in between Things, you know, all those Things – the ones who busily define who I am Not via the artful art of Wishful Thinking. The books I refer to here are the ones sitting patiently there in Device Land just waiting for a tiny crack to emerge amongst a formidable array of Pet Obsessions only to take another shot at ruffling me up a bit.

I began this little Quest a few years back during Lent. I determined to give up, for Lent, my Agreeable Reading. Mind you this is not the same as taking up Disagreeable Reading. This really only just amounted to, at the time, any writers which I might run across who just may possess the audacity to challenge one or more of my Cherished Myths. It turns out that the world is quite rife with such writers. Who knew?

Okay, so it appears I have acquired yet another Pet Obsession. And strangely, as Pet Obsessions go, an often rather uncomfortable one.  If you happen to be one of those people addicted to Discomfort you won’t find this obsession strange at all. My own addictions, for the most part, appear only to be uncomfortable to others who I come into contact with. For the most part, my own addiction is primarily to Comfort.

Of course that one Lent book, several years back, was rather on the short side, Lent being only 40 days long or so (not counting Sundays, of course). My little device now seems increasingly crowded with uncomfortable literature of the greater than 40 Days variety. Oh well.

So why would I want to challenge my own Myths? Well, I don’t really want to much at all. It is much more my style, and rather a popular style I should think, to challenge the Myths of Others. Unfortunately, more often than not, the only challenge I have to hand is to call each Myth out as a Myth. Such a challenge is unlikely to enlighten anyone older than 8. So okay apparently, left to my own devices, I’m only just that lazy.

So I let Other Myths challenge my own Myths instead – my own little backwards path to Enlightenment. Okay, even that isn’t all that unique. It’s pretty much how the Systems of Education have always thought of themselves. It just so happens that the particular Myth at the heart of the book I now have in hand (assuming my Device is in my hand) is itself none other than Enlightenment. And the challenge there is that, traditionally, Enlightenment itself has long been a favorite target of my own Scorn and Contempt, at least in the Mythical Realm. Don’t expect me to explain my Scorn and Contempt here. I’m fairly certain that it is, in fact, my totally irrational Scorn and Contempt.

But I am committed to read the Books through anyway, and so I likely shall.

And, in the process,  I will likely encounter some form of Enlightenment even Despite Myself.

The one Reassurance I may find is that I am pretty sure my own personal Myths are Real. But then the hidden challenge is none other than that stark possibility – even probability – that the Myth of the Other is every bit as Real as the Myth of my own cherishing.

And therein lies the possibility of ever New Adventure…