Conjuring

There are as many reasons to read as there are people.

For me, good books conjure up people and places the way lighted windows at night draw innocent peeping Toms. I move along paragraph to paragraph, page to page, eavesdropping on other people's lives and adventures and if the writer is very good, I think I am right there among them.

And, sometimes, if the writer is especially tuned into my way of thinking, he comes up with ideas that translate into parts of my life.

Randall Kenan is doing that for me in Let The Dead Bury Their Dead when he talks about people having to conjure up new dreams when the old ones die. Almost everyone has to do it at some point in their life, but occasionally it escapes our notice, or we don't think it is possible.

I began thinking about this after putting my book down last night and I think it is not only possible, but inevitable if we are going to continue living. Knowing that, I realize that sometimes it might just be better to go ahead and conjure up a new dream rather than waiting until it happens haphazardly on its own.

Conjuring up new dreams is an imaginative, fun thing to do unless I am desperately grieving the loss of an old one. Then it feels more like an abandonment, or betrayal -- but it's not.

Dreams are like breaths. They are a necessary part of living and moving forward. Without them life eventually ends in the suffocation and death of everything connecting body to the soul. Living without dreams turns good people into zombies.

The kind of dream I am talking about is that little carrot that drags me out of bed on dark days, or lights up the night when it becomes overwhelmingly long. It is what makes eating less of a coping mechanism and more of a delight. It is the foundation that does not completely crumble when the rain falls or a fire wipes everything out.

If the dream is so elusive that its very existence feels suspect, then it is time to read and look for other people's dreams, find out how they conjured something from seemingly nothing and found their footing.

Conjuring is not all illusion and trickery. Sometimes it is the just that first invisible step up to the next level.