I'm currently half way through reading Jane Eyre for the first time and, wow! This book is so beautiful, I'm in awe. It's the first book I can truly say I've cherished. 

I initially borrowed it from the library but after the first two chapters I knew this was a book I had to own and I happened to be in a queue at the post office when there it was, in the Popular Penguin style inviting me to buy it for only $10. Owning it allows me to enjoy it at a much more leisurely pace, I'm steadily absorbing its richness. In some way reading acts as barometer of my state being. If I'm tired or weary then the words just seem to wash over me and I don't really appreciate the beauty of it  and I know I'm loosing the opportunity to enjoy this great work, so I stop, I wait and I rest until I've more energy to enjoy it.

Whilst I like the old style of the book cover I don't think I'd want a whole bookshelf full of them. But then I've never really been attached to the idea of building up my own library of books, as a friend (who does have a sizeable book collection) says, "they're just expensive wallpaper". Having relocated myself significant distances a couple of times over the last few year I've been very comfortable with letting go of most books.  Don't get me wrong, there are some books that I do hold on to and Jane Eyre has joined that collection. Invariably I'm also happy to give my books away (although don't come knocking on my door for them), I feel it's nicer both to give and receive a book that's been read before. If I'm giving a book to someone it's creating a connection, in some way we are sharing in the world of the book that's been given. That's often my gauge of enjoyment of a work of fiction: by how much do I feel like I'm inhabiting the world in my own imagination and memory, even when I'm away from it.  I think the first book that caught me up in it was Stranger in a Strange Land as a teenager and now Jane Eyre has me. I'm half way through and it's wonderful, it's nourishing, so I read it slowly and savour it.

As an aside, in looking to source an image of the book cover I visited the Popular Penguin Australia website and I thought I'd mention it here because I really like it. It's singular in it's focus, cleanly designed with a nice use of Javascript animations when you highlight and select a book. It's also nice to see that it's a ColdFusion site, my web application programming language of choice.

The second piece of media that I've come across lately and I've said to myself 'This is Gold!' is WNYC's Radio Lab. I listened to the "Where Am I" podcast  whilst driving down to Brisbane to pick up my mother from the airport, here's the summary from their site:

This hour: stories of people whose brains and bodies have lost each other. We ask how does your brain keep track of your body? We’ll examine the bond between brain and body and look at what happens when it breaks. We begin with a century-old mystery: why do many amputees still feel their missing limbs? We speak with a neuroscientist who solved the problem with a magician’s trick: an optical illusion. We continue with the story of a butcher who suddenly lost his entire sense of touch. And we hear from pilots who lose consciousness and suffer out-of-body experiences while flying fighter jets.

This is a really smart, funny, compelling broadcast. Listen to it.
I look forward to getting into more of their podcasts. Here's the iTunes link to their whole series.

Ok, I'm going to go off on a tangent here, but stick with me:
So I'm writing this blog post and to reference Radio Lab I do a web search to get the address and before I know it I'm off, distracted, in internet land: I suddenly remember that I wanted to subscribe to the Radio Lab blog, oh and the Meditaion Oasis blog, oh and didn't they mention they've got a twitter account now, so I check that out too, scrolling through the tweets to the last one  listed which mentions a "visual meditation on the present moment."

I pause.

I realise I'm freewheeling now, heading for procrastination and I'm not going to get this blog post finished tonight... but hey, what's the harm, it's just one more link, so I click and here's what I get, a presentation by Radio Lab. I'm coming full circle now:

What's going on there?
I don't know but it doesn't stop: I see on Youtube that the video was inspired by the book Sum by David Eaglemen, so I jumped on the library website and placed a reserved it.

Now you might call this unfocussed meanderings, but for me, this is exploring. And there's so much exploring to do: Can you believe I've just discovered Leonard Cohen, can you believe it? This world is filled with such variety and richness and I feel like I'm just scraping the surface and I'm happy.