Turning it Around

How to escape it all

What do you love about being alive during this particular time on earth?
This prompt recently came from Lisa Olivera’s Human Stuff , a Substack I highly recommend. What do I love about being alive right now? I’ll start with the obvious: watching, experiencing, and spending time with my husband, children, and grandchildren. Ditto on time with my extended family and friends. I love to make art. I love having the opportunity to create and the time and means to do so. I love that I shared my creativity with people all over the world during my 27 years of teaching and am still in touch with many of them, as well as those I have never met, who, thanks to devices like the one you are reading this on, know of me through my writing.

I love the home I have created, the land it is on, and the wildlife that greets me every morning. I love that, despite what the world is experiencing, I still witness human acts and words of love and know that, right now, there are people out there trying to make things better, against all odds.

I remember love at first sight on the first day of First Grade when I knew this was the place where I would learn to read. I remember the thrill of getting my first library card and vowing that I was going to read every book in the library, as I walked past the “adult” section on my way to the children’s book section in the back. I love to read. I love writing* and making books, too. I love creating found poetry in my handmade books.

©️Lesley Riley 2025

Nora Ephron said, “Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real.”

What would we do without reading? Listening to a book counts, too. But reading is better, much better. The key, I believe, is holding the book in your hands. It becomes more than just words. For a time, it is your world. It’s an intimate, grounding experience.

Reading and writing on Substack is also intimate. When I write, I feel like I am talking with you, hoping that my words give you an uplift, something to think about, or even a momentary escape from the outside world. I’ve virtually met many writers who open and enhance my understanding and awareness, or just tell a good story, by inviting me into their lives with their words.

Thank you for reading my words. I hope that you’ll share yours with me, too. As Olivera asks, “What do you love about being alive during this particular time on earth?” Do books play a part? What is important to you at this time?

*I’ve written 10 craft/how-to books, but always in as narrative a style as possible.😉

Quotes of the Week

When you look out at the world and see a swell of grief, know your body is seeing clearly. When you look out at the world and feel a surge of awe in your heart, know your body is seeing clearly. It is possible to hold both. It is human to hold both.
Lisa Olivera

We read to know that we are not alone.
William Nicholson

The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is moral illumination.
Elizabeth Hardwick

The pleasure of reading is not necessarily just about providing pleasure to the mind,
but to the heart, the emotions, the body, and the soul.
Jodie Archer

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.
Gaston Bachelard