songs of experience

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“As years pass and experience writes new records in our mind life, we go back to some works of art we rejected in the early days and find values we missed. Work, love, laughter, pain, death, put impressions on us as time passes, and we brood over what has happened, praying it may be an exalted brooding. Out of songs and scars and the mystery of personal development, we may get eyes that pick out intentions we had not seen before in people, in art, in books and poetry. Naturally, too, the reverse happens. What we register to at one period of life, what we find gay and full of fine nourishment at one time, we may find later has lost interest for us. A few masterpieces last across the years. We usually discard some. A few masterpieces are enough. Why this is so we do not know. For each individual his new acquisitions and old discards are different.” - Carl Sandburg

I just read an essay in the June 11, New Yorker magazine by Roger Angell (one of my favorite living authors) on summer movies. It has me thinking about good summer reads, so I dusted off my old copy of Nine Stories by JD Salinger - possibly the best collection of short stories EVER written - maybe even the best book ever. I realize it is a cliche to say one loves Salinger, but I do. And re-reading him as a mother, at age 45, is beyond magical. All the children in his stories are no longer the painful, pitiful, angst-ridden versions of the grown-up reader (me), but simply …beautifully, perfectly, innocently .. children.

My children, all children. I love them!

Once again, thank you, JD.