Photo by Bill Stokes
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper appreciates the advantage of a reading wife as Phyllis shares with him snatches of whatever book she is currently into. Part of the enjoyment of this for the keeper is in noting the depth of pleasure and stimulation that writers bring to Phyllis, whether it is fact or fiction. Recently she—and the keeper, were in Ireland with the IRA, then on the Mexican border with too much violence, and then with an autistic child somewhere in the US.
Phyllis’s reading, of course, is enriching for both her and the keeper; and and in a convoluted way it validates the keeper’s writing life: Written words—matter, in whatever form, even newspaper copy, and never more so than when they generate discussion.
Somewhere in all of this may be the explanation for the daily writing of Kickass, which Phyllis not only reads, but obviously assists with.
