TURN THE PAGE...

I like books. Love books. LIVE for books.

The test of a reader is: Have you read a book while walking down the street at any point in the last, oh, year.

If the answer is yes, then you're a reader.

I was walking out of the train station near my apartment in Japan, reading the first volume of Robert Caro's great, unending biography of Lyndon Johnson when a crazy Japanese homeless guy whacked me in the stomach with a two-by-four. (Howard Cosell's famous call of the Ali/Frazier fight echoes in my mind: "Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!") I was down for the count in Sagami-Ono, Japan.

I could sit in a room by myself and read and be reasonably happy for the rest of my life.

But is reading enough?

There's the world inside the books, and the world outside of the room where you're reading the books. And, at a certain point, those two worlds have to, should, collide.

You can't get everything from books. You can get a lot -- perspective, compassion, empathy, plain old knowledge -- but as a way of learning about the world, understanding the world, you gotta get out.

You gotta walk around.

You gotta travel, listen, observe.

I was given a book by a friend of the family called LOST JAPAN by Alex Kerr before I went to Japan. It was all about how the Japan of today doesn't compare to the Japan of yesterday, about how the modern Japan is trashing the traditional Japan, about how customs die and are buried on a daily basis, and now nobody in Japan seems to be noticing, let alone caring.

I read half of it. Put it down. I couldn't get it. Couldn't process it. Couldn't imagine it.

Why?

Because it was all about stuff that I had no first-hand contact with. Culture, economy, history and society -- I knew about that stuff in Canada. (Kind of. Well, a little.)

But in the rest of the world? Japan? Didn't affect me. My borders were square, and I was inside them, and I hadn't been out.

Cut to two years later, and I've lived in Japan, and taught the people, and ate the food, and watched the news, and learned the language (a little.)

I tried to read LOST JAPAN again. I found myself nodding. Understanding. Agreeing and disagreeing with his points. The book had a shape and a texture and a relevance that was suddenly, well, relevant to me. Because I'd been in that world for awhile, if not of it.

Books and reality are sometimes two different worlds for me.

The intersection of the two is when life really starts getting interesting. It's when 'life' with a capital 'L' meets and greets the thinking, pondering individual who turns the pages.

The intersection is when the boldness and vividness of life come into full play.