You will never have to worry about using a perfect opening line because there is no perfect opening line. A girl who reads knows that there's more to you than an opening line. She's not big into impressions either; you are who you are. You don't have to look hard to find her - she's all around; in the coffee shop around the corner, in the mall, in the car next to you, in a fancy corporate office or a chilled-out advertising hub, on the street or busy reading and/or typing away at a nondescript address.
There's something about the written word that a reader and writer will never be able to explain. It's a love affair that begins as inconsequentially as the birth of a new day. However, that doesn't mean that she'll love you less. She doesn't expect you to understand her love for the written word; she doesn't even know if she understands it herself! All she knows is the enthralling, enticing adventure that the marriage of thoughts, ideas, feelings, emotions and words create. This adventure possesses various hues - sometimes it's as wild as the African jungle, other times it's exhilaratingly joyous, ever so often it may be sad, heart-breaking almost, and at still other times it could be calm, peaceful, and silent.
However, whatever journey she is on, she will hold your hand, embrace you and share her travels with you... only if you want. She may talk passionately about Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra and his passion with books on chivalry, she'll wonder aloud on what Fyodor Dostoevsky was thinking when he wrote 'Demons', she hasn't even gone through Chapter One yet!, she'll talk about Khalil Gibran and his passion for love, and she'll quote Pablo Neruda when she can't find words enough to express how she feels about you. She won't expect you to know the writers she's passionate about, but, she will talk to you about them because she loves you and loves them too.
To her, love is about romance and all the things that go with it. She doesn't expect you to act romantic if you're not, but be assured that she will. She may act all collected, but she loves all of life's simple pleasures, most of which she finds in your arms.
A reader and writer will be in a relationship only if she believes that it's going somewhere. It’s not about the time one “invests” in a relationship; it’s about how you feel when you’re with someone. If she's with you, you can be sure that she's head over heels and all the way back in love with you. Don't ask her to explain, for all this love of the written word, she will not be able to (though she will try, falling short of words, and then give you a kiss that seals it all)!
Her vocabulary may include words that often need a dictionary reference, but she tries to simplify her language in conversation and writing. To her life and love are intertwined, because she has learnt that life is love; there' no other way to live.
There'll be times when you lose her completely; in fact, she'll be lost to the world. But that's only because she hypnotised with the written word. Once she’s out of her trance she will look up at you, smile and thank God that she has your arms to fall into.
She will never expect you to live up to the protagonist from her books; she loves you for you, not for whom you may represent. Okay, so she understands syntax, but that’s only because she’s passionate about language. She may even edit people’s sentences in her head, but she resorts to that only when she’s bored. Literature, like all else personifies romanticism of an era gone by. Ever ready to love and be loved, this girl cried over Shakespeare’s writings and still wishes that she could change the end to Romeo and Juliet.
She won’t ever assume or perceive what you’re saying based on your pauses. She will hear you out, and have a heart-to-heart with you after. This is not someone who points an accusing finger based on her knowledge of syntax. She may edit the world’s sentences in her head, but you’re not a ‘part’ of that world – you ARE her world, and she wouldn’t subject you to that.
Yes, the girl who reads can probably feel the plot of her book in her very bones, she is also prepared for the end; but only because she knows that ends are ends only when she wants them to be. Books, plots and protagonists change, but her end remains the same, and that’s an end she sees with you. Only, she will not call it an end, because with you it’s never an end, it’s a fabulous journey with smooth highways, and curved mountain roads. But then, she’s loves it all.
Yes, we girls who read and write are storytellers. Us with Kafka, Nietzsche, Keats, Murakami, Neruda, Gibran, Hemingway and the rest! We’re everywhere, well, nearly everywhere, but not here to make anyone’s life a misery. Quite the contrary actually! So, we love reading, adore writing, and may even pen our stories, but, we allow our listeners and readers to make their own conclusions. They decide if the narrative is rich, they conclude if the story has meaning. No one can ever conclusively say that X story is one that’s as enthralling as Utopia. Utopia to us bookworms could be something else to you, and all of us respect that because that my dear is the beauty of the written word.
These beautiful words strung together through a fabulous marriage born from a writer’s imagination allow everyone to make their own conclusions, and dream their own dreams.
We, bookworms and writers do not expect you to live up to the protagonist in books; in fact, we don’t even want you to. No, we love you just the way you are, and if that means sprawling before the television and yelling at some sport, well, we’d sprawl with you. Sure, we accept nothing less than passion, and never will. We believe that you should be passionate about whoever you’re with and everything you do, if not, there really is no point, just reason.
Yes, we’d like to live our life like a story, but here’s one story that we wants to write with you; this is a story with two authors and both their names are “Us”.
We’ve got a couple of tickets on that southbound train, only we’d rather take the train up north. Are you with us readers and writers on this? Oh come on already, don’t worry about failing here, we’re certainly not worried. In fact, if and when you do we’d hold you tighter still because failure gives birth to newer dreams. You are allowing us our dreams, and you have already given us the most precious one yet, you.
So get on that train, make that proposal, walk down the aisle, have a couple of children (yes, we will play Mozart when we’re pregnant and introduce them to the written word), and make our own stories a reality. We may be readers and writers, but ever so often we like listening too, and when it comes to you, we’re all ears.
And, if you’re not much of a storyteller, you can just put your arms around us and we’ll watch our story unfold.
