PROX TRANSTAR

"THE ART OF READING"
          
          Reading is one of the four basic modes of learning for an individual; the other three being listening, communicating, and thinking. We acquire information mainly through observation and experience, and reading provides us with visual and intuitive experience, the strength of which depends on the text or material we read. The art of reading is manifested creatively, just like arts such as painting or music, but unlike most arts, it is nor expressed outwardly but inward. Why do we read novels and stories? It's so that we can express ourselves through imagination. Books provides us with the best outlets and circuits to allow and direct the flow of psychic energy within our minds. And thus we can imagine scenes of what happened and we can hear sounds as if there were really characters conversing within our heads. But that is the wonders of our brain. Remember that books are not real, as they are only the structured accumulation of symbols called words. What's real is our interpretation of them. Therefore, when we read, we interpret ideas and then express them within our heads as images and sounds.

"THE ART OF NOT READING"
          
          We read for a variety of purposes. We read mostly for entertainment and for gaining information, and the type of books we read depends on our purpose. However, we can never really gain true knowledge just by reading alone. Knowledge is information practiced in the real world. However, the real world can't compare to our inner world - the world where intuition, thinking, feeling, and sensation rules; the world of our psyche. From our minds burst forth words which are then converted into meaningful symbols of language, and thus we are able to write what we think of. Our writing can describe or reveal the pattern of our thoughts. But reading is the opposite. Reading allows us to glimpse at the thought pattern of a writer. And hence reading is only following his footsteps. And although reading provides us with many benefits, it is not without flaws. For because we follow someone else' footsteps, we forget to tread our own. And that is a crime, for every individual has his own path, he has his own fate to walk. And therefore when we allow ourselves to always follow someone else' footsteps, in other words when we read too much, we don't learn to walk on our own. Much like how a child, once guided by his parent's hand to trace letters on the paper would need to learn how to write on his own, so too does we have to learn how to write, and subsequently think independtly.

"Alchemy"
          
          I lift my heart as spring lifts up
          A yellow daisy to the rain;
          My heart will be a lovely cup
          Altho' it holds but pain.
          
          For I shall learn from flower and leaf
          That color every drop they hold,
          To change the lifeless wine of grief
          To living gold. 
          
          -Sara Teasdale