From a Writer…
The telling of stories matters. The listening to and reading of stories matter. It keeps us human. Writing them keeps me human. Stories remind me that I am not alone.
If we do not read, we fail to be curious. We fail to learn from ourselves and learn from the stories that run through everyone. We fail to understand, and we remain unchanged, we fail to see the other person who is telling their particular story.
It is criminal that books are mostly only available to the fortunate.
The Government neglects the majority, and relegates the majority of people to a life of ignorance and illiteracy.
It does this as if it was the good and proper thing to do, as it neglects with impunity and a heartlessness that leaves almost no space for questioning and one can only stare wide-eyed and reeling in disbelief. Neglect is a story. How does the same thing day in and day out, FEEL?
How does being kept away from knowledge and finding out more, feel?
The writer would imagine getting out, GETTING OUT, that reading, learning to read and HOW to read would be a beginning, a step, a leap. The writer would imagine ideas and dialogue beginning and continuing between people of all ages, great and challenging debates till the early hours, seeking to understand one another, connecting. No more the superstitious, rigid, hate filled and oft murderous thoughts towards people, towards sexual preference and expression of sexuality, no prejudice towards skin colour. An informed and enlightened society rather than the ruinously violent society South Africans live in.
That all minds would open and OPEN, as books open, that perceptions would change, that one would have the key on the inside of the prison door.
The writer imagines that the level of illiteracy and lack of education would be considered a state of emergency and all who could, would mobilise and give of their time, money and support. Give of their books on the shelf and to assist those who are under the gun, on the edges, those who have been pushed to the edges.
The ones that feel no one cares, but the writer imagines that one day others just might. The ones that can, should bear up under the strain for the people that cannot bear anymore and have certainly borne enough.
