Hunter

To sit quietly and work – read, write, study – one needs first a precious opportunity and then the perfect setting: an institution dedicated to the mind, the pen; or a solitary table with a solitary chair set before it, placed in a small room housing one, where one may read for pleasure and study from a mountain of books; and here make notes from the text or of one's own thoughts and questions, which may lead to further investigation.
Compelled like a Benedictine monk to read, though unbound by any rule, such individuals let life's normal transactions slip from them. But a book, like a revolution, like the discovery of an unknown continent, like an army sieging the gates or walls of a city to occupy land they think should be theirs, can be an agent of change; can be akin to a wall built, a wall toppled; a leader made, a leader taken down; a flag planted in the soil, a flag waved in triumph at the summit of a mountain; or less dramatically, a traveller falling mysteriously ill: a sneeze, a cough, a fever. A book's influence may be slow to gather pace, may be a less thrilling event than other heroic moments, but Time will record it, and Time will notice. And thus preserved, curiosity, once said by the Church to be a mortal sin, will compel new generations (of readers) to hunt, to read, to learn.

Picture credit: Roman de la Rose (Author of a manuscript at his writing desk), Wikipieda, National Library of Wales.

Written March 2022.