Learning to Read (continued)

A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.

                                                 Proverbs 25: 11

Visual images remain one of the ways we read. During medieval times in the Western world (or the Dark Ages as we used to call this era), illiteracy was high. Most people could not read. Thankfully, manuscripts from earlier times were carefully preserved in monasteries. For the common people, the culture of the time and its stories were preserved in stone carvings and stained glass windows of the great cathedrals constructed during this period.

It is said that Chartres Cathedral in France was an encyclopedia — that it was possible to read all of what was known in its architecture. Much of the meanings of this magnificent edifice have been lost over the centuries. Today, scholars work to translate what is there to give us a fuller picture of this era in history.

When the secular French revolution began, cathedrals across France were “attacked.” Heads were broken off statuary — as if this “beheading" would render religion powerless. Chartres Cathedral was turned into a Temple of Reason.

The French were not the only ones attempting to eradicate the power of visual images. A century earlier, Puritans such as Oliver Cromwell and his forces smashed priceless stained glass windows in England and Ireland — because such beauty and color were idolatrous or offensive to their strict religious sensibilities. These losses to future generations can never be recovered.

By the twentieth century, the worth of such architectural treasures meant great efforts were taken to prevent their deterioration or damage. Regardless of religious significance, the preservation of cathedrals is considered part of our common heritage.

Heroic efforts were made during WWII to preserve the art of Europe in its various forms. Many of the stained glass windows at Chartres were carefully removed from their frames — to prevent their destruction during bombings raids. The windows were hidden away in safe places and restored after the war was over. If the windows were broken restoration would have difficult or impossible, because with all our modern technology, no one has been able to figure out the formula for the brilliant blue glass of Chartres Cathedral’s windows. A gift for people like me who go to Chartres and marvel at the stories they have to tell.

Efforts were also made to preserve priceless art in museums. In Amsterdam, great paintings were removed from their frames, rolled up, and buried in the sand. Who ever would have thought the sand contained these treasures during the war!

Another massive effort was made to protect the collection in the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad (its name now returned to St. Petersburg) during the 900 day siege of the city. Again, paintings were removed from their frames in order to ship them by railcar to the interior of Russia — out of Hitler’s reach. Unfortunately, not of the art made it to safety. Over fifty years later, tracing the origins of private collections of art and their rightful owners continues.

In one of the great acts of defiance during the long siege, the people of the city, who endured so much death and starvation, would come to the Museum and walk its galleries. They would stop before each empty frame as if the painting were still there. Just as any of us does when visiting a museum today. They were honoring and reading their national treasure.

In more recent times, destruction of Buddhist and Muslim libraries and statutary have been the target of Islamic extremists. Racing against potential loss, the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library in Collegeville, Minnesota (sponsored by St. John's Abbey and University) is digitalizing medieval treasures. One of their efforts has been to preserve the Jewish and Christian manuscripts housed at Aleppo, Syria. So much to rescue — and so little time.

Other efforts are being made by a number of scholars to access and photograph manuscripts and wall art in cave-temples along the Silk Road in China. Much of this treasure has been preserved due to the caves' inaccessibility, the arid desert air, and beliefs by local people that spirits guard the caves. Such work requires careful negotiations, since the local people often are suspicious that researchers might be raiding the caves and selling what they find for profit — an archeological travesty committed at many ancient sites around the world.

All of this work arises out of the complex ways people have used to communicate with each other over millennia. Reading is about so much more than printed words, placed on pages — whether by ink, paint, or reproduction by modern printing presses. And I thought when I skipped off to first grade to learn to read that reading was a simple matter of matching words on paper to the sounds of those words!

As a poet, I have learned other lessons about the complexity of reading. Poetry begins with visual images — from a part of the brain that does not have language. As a writer, I translate these interior images into words, then give my writing away to people.

Good poetry has layers upon layers of meanings. Even simple descriptive poetry is about more than an object being described. Therein is the beauty and mystery of poetry. Often poets do not really know what they mean with their words that travel such indirect interior path! And readers bring their own lenses to a poem. Hence, interpretation of any poem’s meanings by its readers may vary widely. Like the bystanders who witness a car accident.

At our house, we are replacing a dying PC computer with a new Mac computer — after several decades of using PC computers. We quickly discovered that Mac computers use different words and symbols to describe familiar actions. A person trashes unwanted email rather than deleting it. Bookmarks are what we have called Favorites. Not my collection of bookmarks with wise sayings that I have accumulated over time to mark my place in a book which I am reading!

Initially, the helpful Apple people sounded like people from another country where I traveled and did not know the language. Reminiscent of trying to explain what a furnace was to a young woman who had lived all her life in Costa Rica just north of the Panama border. How puzzling this furnace-thing was to her when she lived in a house without window-glass and had never experienced temperatures below 70 degrees Fahrenheit!

Or when I was in eastern Germany one year after Reunification. Then, people usually spoke no English — only German and Russian. Asking people on the street where to buy a bus ticket to the next town with my hands and rudimentary German became a major event. Finally, we went to a bank where a  teller understood what we were asking.

What we had learned with our freedom to travel throughout eastern Germany was that bus tickets were sold in different places depending on the town. Sometimes you bought your ticket on the bus. At others times, you bought tickets at a kiosk. But people in this town did not know about this difference — because during Communist rule, no one was allowed to travel to the next town. And at that time, most citizens had not yet traveled a few kilometers to a neighboring community. Hence, the basic question made no sense (where do I buy a bus ticket). It's not just words. Context is necessary for us to communicate and to read.

Nonverbal language also varies from country to country. Pumping our arms up and down with a fist means an emphatic YES in this country. In Italy, my husband learned after the fact that the gesture has an obscene meaning – roughly up yours . . . In Thailand, you learn to not sit casually with your leg crossed over your knee, a comfortable posture here. Because showing the sole of your shoe sends a message of rude disrespect.

Even though we share a common language and history when we gather around the table with friends or family, sometimes we misunderstand each other. However, if you gather around a table with people from Bulgaria, be forewarned. Our up-down nod of the head means no in Bulgaria. Shaking our head sideways means yes to a Bulgarian!

I gained further insights into the complicated nature of reading reading this past summer as I co-created a new book, CONVERSATIONS • Images and Poetry with my colleague-husband (and neglecting my blog). The book is his poetry and my photography. Our intention is for these two means of expression to generate a conversation with the other — and hopefully a third conversation with the reader of the book. Not the traditional use of poetry and photography are used in which a poem is written about a photo (or piece of art). Or a photo is used to illustrate a poem.

But when I take my camera in hand and prowl the world near and far, my mind is in visual mode —  no words. And those images register I n a different place in my brain that my verbal skills reside.

How important is learning to read? Reading books, precious books, is a joy in my life. I am glad that when I skipped off to first grade my first day that I was dreaming about the magic of learning to read. Our culture is word and print-driven. Not being able to read is a serious handicap. Whether you read words in books, in the media, text or twitter, try to understand directions about using a piece of equipment, or scan menus in restaurants, reading an essential skill.

Over time, I have come to understand how reading is far more complex than I thought when as a child, I was eager to learn to "decipher the squiggly black marks on the pages."