Reading is nothing but a barely worthy past time if we don't make use of what we are reading. The ‘read and forget about it’ practice is not any better than people who sit in front of the TV for hours. When people tell you they are smart because they read a lot rather than watch TV, it means nothing unless you know what they are actually reading. Plenty of people spend countless worthless hours reading westerns sci-fi romance novels celebrity bios detective stories and the like. And what's worse is that even when we are reading something worthy it doesn’t help much if all we do is read it and then shelve it. I am finding that the worth of reading, as in any media consumption, is what we actually do with the new data that we collect. New data has a very short shelf life in the old noggin. If we don't make use of it from the outset, its gone for good and becomes just another memory. Oh yeah, I think I read that book. Yeah, that was a good one from what I can remember... So the real benefit is in reading a bit, practicing it a bit, then reading a bit more, practicing a bit more... making use of what we are gathering along the way each and every day.

In other news, my depression, see how I named it mine already? how quick we are to take on any old thing that happens to rear its ugly head in our universe, my depression knows no end it seems. Knows absolutely no end. if I were not such a glutton for these types of things I would be worried. But the truth is that I have never known life without a slight depression, basked in it as an artist feeling that at worst it makes life miserable, at best it sparks the creative juices, and somewhere in between it makes life all the more interesting; perhaps maybe even a desperation this is. Even when I'm ecstatic, I still have that tugging and nagging sense of depression underneath it all. just sometimes I am not aware of it. for years I wasn't aware of it. now I am suddenly. what I like about it though is that it helps me relate better to people. I like that. the tree, Queenie, Francis, half the people I know are depressed in general and on some medication for either being too up or too down. Ferret could make a living at one liners about how miserable he is. Bas is generally moody as a dog about to be put out of its misery and plenty of other comrades claim a general dissatisfaction about life in the universe that if I dance in singing and praising the joy of ‘all that is’ they will look at me with a disaffected grimace as if to say ‘what are you so happy about?’ so I like this state only in as much as it reminds me that we can all get down now and then. even me. like down without being able to get up kind of a down. And I think it’s important to remember that. that's possible. Then again, I'm more than ready to be done with the images of shooting myself in the head or jumping off of tall buildings that pop up in my mind every few minutes. What is that?