Dr. Maria DeBlassie

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The Story Eater

That is all you want to do lately: gobble them up, each story as they unfold, slurping up sentences like a strand of spaghetti, feel the tang of so many words sharp and full on your tongue.

Some you want to savor as you would an artichoke, tearing off each page and running your teeth along its fleshy insides until you reach the heart of the story, one part thorns, the other ripe flesh.  It is the process of tasting your way through its earthy labyrinth as much as it is finding the tender center that fills your soul.  Others you would nibble at, like a wedge of fine cheese or a square of dark chocolate, loath to rush through the velvety decadence--and some you have no patience for, tossing their thick words and empty plots aside like so much wilted lettuce for the compost, nourishing (you know not how, only that all composted things must) your future words if not yourself. 

Then there are the ones you must devour in one sitting--those ripe peaches whose early blush make you unable to suffer through the tender courtship of each chapter parceled out over a series of days that they might require to fully digest.  These you must bite into and greedily consume their fruit, thinking only after, when you are left with a listless paperback, that you should have taken your time, knowing full well you couldn't--only it would be something to read this part or that again with virgin eyes.

Still others you turn to time and again, the familiar comfort of a well-trod plot as with the perfume of crushed garlic and rosemary staining your hands, the sharp scent of things simmering on your stove, an invisible ink absorbed from the pages of those stories, to flow from your own pen.

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