It chose me.
I originally became an English major freshman year because writing was the only thing that I thought I could tolerate for four years. I considered physical therapy, biology, and geography, but nothing seemed as appropriate as English. So, in the spring of my freshman year I declared English as my course of study, and I haven't looked back. Although I always thought that I chose English as my major, I have come, in recent years, to realize that English really chose me.
I have had an affinity for words, particularly poetry, since I was little when I discovered an apparently popular book of poetry, One Hundred One Famous Poems. Although I seem to see this book everywhere now, growing up, I thought that my tattered, water-stained, 1928 copy was the only one in the world, and I treasured it. I began reading it when was about eight, and I let the words of Kipling, Cooke, Field, Whitman, and Longfellow introduce me to things that I would later recognize as the most important things in life like morality, courage, and kindness. I would read the Romantics for hours, and by the time that I arrived in high school English, Coleridge and Wordsworth were old friends, not new "material."
I always knew that I liked words, poetry, and good writing better than most people, but it wasn't until I began collecting quotes during my sophomore year of high school that I learned that I come from an extensive line of logophiles. I've always admired the wisdom that can be found in good quotes, and after finding more quotes than I could remember, I began writing them down in a notebook. Ten quotes turned into several hundred, and one notebook turned into two volumes. In the course of seven years I've collected more than two thousand quotes. I don't just collect quotes, I read them, too. I often get asked why I collect, "other people's words," and to be honest, I've never had an answer. I always make up some excuse or reason that the person will buy so they'll leave me alone about my literary quark, but the only real answer that I've ever been able to come up with is, "Because I have to." Of course, I don't actually have to write quotes down in my quote book, but I always feel that I'll be doing a disservice to the author and to myself if I don't keep them for future reference. To me, quotes are more than words, they are advice, they are life lessons learned the hard way, they are what's at the end of the road less traveled, and I've been told recently that they are all that I have of two grandparents I will never know.
I've known for a few years that my dad used to collect quotes on his computer. By collect quotes I mean that he would sign up for one of those quote a week websites, and if he liked the quote that they sent him then he'd add it to his collection. He didn't take it as far as me with two notebooks worth of quotes and hours spent perusing quote websites and asking for books about sailing quotes for Christmas. Instead he had a modest, but valuable, collection in a file on his old computer. Unfortunately, when the computer crashed a few years ago it took his quote collection with it. The computer crash was the definitive end of my dad's quote collecting, and I went back to being the only collector in the family, or so I thought.
As the years progressed and the pages in my quote book grew thicker and more well worn, my logophilic tendencies began to gain more interest. People suddenly wanted to read my quote book, which to me is a very personal thing, and people began to consider my quote collection as "impressive" and they described my passion for words as "fascinating." On a trip to Europe once, three people decided to start their own quote books. Something that started as a strange interest has matured into an impressive and fascinating hobby. But where did it all begin?
It began, I have been told, with two of my grandmother's aunts. Apparently one was a librarian and both were writers. Although neither one of them collected quotes, to my knowledge, they both wrote and loved poetry, and so my childhood love affair with the Romantics finds an explanation. I love poetry because I am programmed to love poetry. As for the quotes, several years ago my dad found a two page collection of quotes that my grandfather had written down over the course of his lifetime. From what I can gather from the nature of the quotes in his collection, he read them as aphorisms as I do with mine. I don't have my grandfather's quote collection, but my dad is supposed to be sending it to me soon. Although I don't remember any of the quotes specifically, I'm sure than many of them will find their way into my quote book and add to the thousands of other life lessons learned.
I've known about my grandfather's quote collecting habit for about three years, but it wasn't until yesterday that I learned that my grandmother also had an appreciation for, "other people's words." I was visiting my logophilic aunt, and as we were on the topic of my physical resemblance to my grandmother, my aunt was reminded of our literary resemblance as well. She quickly disappeared into her bedroom for a moment and then reappeared with a stack of old papers in a manilla envelope. Inside were three pages of quotes that my grandmother had collected over time along with a poem that her aunt, the librarian, had written titled "A Few Ifs" - "Not Kipling's." I laughed to myself as I read through my grandmother's quotes, finding many that have been in my book for years. It's amazing what quotes can reveal about a person - if they were optimistic, what their sense of humor was like, and for me, what has been lost and what has been left behind. In my grandmother's quotes I found that I have much more in common with her than just a petite frame and the same facial structure. I share her words, her thoughts, her humor, her appreciation for morality, courage, and kindness. I found that the Romantics once taught her the same lessons that they have taught me; One Hundred One Famous Poems was her book, she tattered the pages that I have come to treasure.
As I said at the beginning of this post, I didn't choose English, it chose me. And I'm glad. Sometimes the papers get to be a bit much, and I don't really enjoy my Lit and the Occult class or my legal writing professor's criticisms, but then I go to the bookshelf in my apartment and I pick up my new edition of One Hundred One Famous Poems, and as I flip through the pages, wondering who I'm tattering them for, I realize that my classes don't matter. I was a writer long before I knew what college was, and I'll be a writer long after I have forgotten what it has taught me. I write both poetry and prose for the same reason that I collect quotes, "Because I have to." For me to not write would be to do a disservice to my family. I've always said that I write for me before I write for anyone else, and while that is still true, I've realized that when I write for me I'm probably writing for my grandchildren, too, and that's okay by me. Maybe in some distant year they'll find my quote books in a box in some attic, and as they flip through the tattered pages they might think of me - and if they never knew me, then perhaps they will find me there, in, "other people's words." That's where I found my grandparents, and through them, that's where I've found myself. I didn't choose English...
