Taking impetus from a recent post of the esteemed Dr Spo's blog, I thought "Well, why not me too? After all, nobody else knows this of me".
As in just a few weeks' time I'll be entering my ninth(!) decade, with the likelihood that I'm not going to be in this world for that much longer, instead of leaving this one particular aspect of my life unknown, why not tell everyone of a rather unusual long-term habit of mine.
Starting just after I left school at the age of 16, and continuing right up to the present - while even adding further to it over the last 60+ years - I've adhered to it, if not for every single day since, then certainly more than 95% of those days. Maybe some of you'll think I'm as mad as a March Hare, but now I'm past caring.
So, most mornings by far, being a news-junkie, after catching up on world news via BBC and Sky while eating brekkies, I go through this:-
1. Revise my memorising of all the Shakespeare Sonnets - one per day, so that in a year I'll have covered each of them at least twice. I first began doing this about 25 years ago. Why? Well, why not?
2. Revision of around 60 poems I know by heart, from various writers of all periods. Again, one per day - plus another one per day of selected poems I don't yet know verbatim, though that may come in time.
3. Read 3 poems per day from the anthology 'Oxford Book of English Verse 1250 -1918', following the alphabetical index of first lines. Nearly 1,000 poems in all.
4. Three poems from volumes of certain individual poets, currently they are Robert Browning and Dylan Thomas which I'm reading in tandem.
5. Read a paragraph or so from a micropedia of British history from 7,000 B.C.E. up to the 1990s.
6. I read a passage from the Bible (Do you gasp? Well, don't worry)
Having completed 10 readings in three versions of the whole darned volume from cover-to-cover over some six decades about 10 years ago, I'm currently re-reading, for the umpteenth time, the New Testament gospels and the epistles, the latter especially being a crashing bore! How anyone on Earth can call the Bible their "favourite book" and to mean it is beyond my comprehension.
Both Old and New Testaments (even in the widely revered King James version), moreso the former, are turgid, flat - and annoyingly sparse on detail, leaving the reader to imagine it as they wish. Of course there are a fair number of episodes we all know - the 'Old' containing the Creation, Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel, Moses, Ten Commandments, Plagues of Egypt, Exodus, Abraham & Isaac, Jacob and his sons incl. Joseph, Samson & Delilah etc etc. plus, of course in the New, the life of J.C. (or at least the final three years of it) with his death and.........resurrection(?) - and all those tedious, repetitive and often puzzling/nonsensical Epistles. But there are really not that many noteworthy events considering the length of the Testaments - yet all separated by acres on acres of ennui - and oh, but all those interminable genealogies! Who cares about who begat whom? Yawn, yawn, yawn! In those patriarchal times (even now far too prevalent in many parts of the world, alas) it seems that only men with male offspring were worthy of mention, with virtually all females being sidelined into non-existence.
7. A section of the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas.
8. A section of the 'Catechism of the Catholic Church'. Why? Same answer.
9. A sura or so from two translations of the Koran - which I find distinctly unappealing, unmoved and not infrequently look askance on.
10 A Chapter-Text (with explanatory commentary) translated from the Hindi scripture of Bhagavad-Gita. Yes, it does go on forever and ever, though it's rarely 'dull'.
Then, if I'm so minded, I might read a section of a book on Yoga (philosophy of, rather than physical practice) plus, maybe, a section from 'The Tibetan Book of the Dead'....or others of that ilk. I have more than a dozen books on Buddhism, the only 'religious' subject towards which I feel some sense of positivity, maybe along with a degree of fascination too, but always from the outside looking in rather than a fully fledged commitment/involvement to it - though I did attend two or three series of meditation classes some years ago.
All the above will usually take me about an hour, after which
I'll do me some physical exercises - stretching, balancing, muscle strengthening, with some basic Tai-Chi thrown in. 
Thus start most of my days - after which, I can get on with my 'normal' day, perhaps shopping for fresh food (twice a week) - then another reading of Boccaccio's 'Decameron' - which I'm now near finishing for the third time, though this time in two translations together - then start my monthly reading of a Shakespeare play (this month it's 'Merchant'). This is a habit I've pursued ever since I was about 18, never ever having missed a single month, so must have read every play at least 20 times. Then it's followed by my choice of yet another third, and surely final, reading (before it's too late) of Hermann Hesse's 'The Glass Bead Game'.
Then, for a change, I might catch up on iPlayer with 'Traitors' - right now the Canadian version, as I've become addicted to all Traitors programmes from whichever country is currently available. The Irish one I've found particularly watchable. 
Ah well! Such is life! Heigh-ho! 😄
You've got an epic reading list there. My head's spinning just thinking about it.
ReplyDeleteBut it sounds like you enjoy it, and the reading gives you pleasure and that's the best thing!
It might sound crazy, Bob, but it almost feels beyond my control - even if I DO enjoy it, or parts of it. But I just HAVE to go through it as an intrinsic part of my life. Can't explain it any further. :-)
DeleteNo need to explain. If you want to do it, and enjoy it, I say go for it!
DeleteWill do! ;-)
DeleteI am in awe, but I’m somehow not surprised.
ReplyDeleteMitch, I think you'd be nearer the mark by thinking "He's lost it - he really has!" :-)
DeleteI agree with Bob. All of those reading..minus the poems, would make my little ole head spin. But you are gifted and a creature of habit. I can think of worst habits to have my friend. Hope you doing well otherwise Raybeard.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that every one of us has our own little 'eccentricities', M.M. Mine just happens to be, perhaps, rather more rare.
DeleteYes, I'm doing okay with life in general, including health, thanks, as I very much hope you are, though if you're not I'm sure you'll tell us in your blog.
Best wishes to you.
Memoizing the all Sonnets, one a day, is a fantastic goal. Impressive even when you are a quarter of the way through.
ReplyDeleteLearning the Sonnets off by heart is no longer a 'goal', Harry. I achieved that quite some years ago. I only revise them every morning to keep them 'alive' in my mind. :-)
DeleteThat is very impressive, Ray. I read every night, regardless of how much reading for work I've done during the day. It's one of the best ways to keep your mind active, right? Help ward off dementia. I'm trying to clean out my clutter so I can downsize. Went through all my old books. Kept my huge Shakespeare tome from college. Why, I have no idea but it gives me pleasure to see it on the shelf. I should take it out and read some!
ReplyDeleteThe memorising part of my rituals, Elle, is specifically aimed at keeping my mind alert with the ability to recall events, names, faces etc - hopefully to at least postpone any arrival of dementia, though of course I didn't have that thought in mind when I started it as a teenager. However, signs of ageing are definitely coming into play. Only last night I was kept awake by trying to remember whose was the 'ghost' singing voice who dubbed Audrey Hepburn in the film version of 'My Fair Lady', Natalie Wood in 'West Side Story' and Deborah Kerr in 'The King and I'. I was determined to NOT look it up, and eventually fell asleep without giving in. Then this morning it came to me suddenly without trying. (Marni Nixon, of course).
DeleteFor my life-long love and appreciation of Shakespeare I must owe to one of the priests who taught us at the Marist college I attended, a Father Hurst, the youngest of our teacher-priests, then aged around 30 or so. A couple of years before him we had a much older priest who did 'Julius Caesar' with us, which I found a colossal bore. But then Father Hurst gave us 'Macbeth' and, goodness me, he really opened our/my minds to the Bard generally - a passion I've been happy to embrace for some 65 years now. I'd have been a different and, indeed, a lesser person if it hadn't been for Father Hurst. My undying gratitude to his memory!
I must admit I couldn't face such a daily routine myself. If it makes you happy though. I do read every day but that's not quite the same.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly isn't to everybody's taste, Carol, or indeed to the vast majority of people, but it DOES give me profound satisfaction.
DeleteI'm also a passionate reader in addition to what I've revealed in my morning ritual. At the weekend there was our biggest seafront market, an annual affair, in which I picked up FOURTEEN second-hand paperbacks, mostly fiction, at a knock-down price. I've already started on the longest of them - a near 700-page autobiography of one of our more recent, now late, British politicians. Can't recall which country you are from but if it's the U.K. you'll surely remember Denis Healey?
I am in the U.K. South East and do indeed remember Denis Healey.
ReplyDeleteOh, we're in the same part of the world then - perhaps only roughly (me, Worthing). Any Brits of a certain age - and above - will remember Denis H. ("Oh, you silly-billy!" which, I believe he never actually said). I'm now 100 pages into his book. His writing is okay, though not quite as captivating as with some other self-penned life stories I've read - and he does use some words which I had to look up. But I WILL get through it within the next week.
ReplyDeletewow! Excellent! Poems keep you good and going!
ReplyDeleteYes. I want to agree that memorising things, perhaps poems above all, helps to stave off, or at least to postpone, the arrival of dementia. It certainly does no harm.
DeleteI"ve been memorizing poems since my youth; I still have a headful of them.
DeleteMe too. I recall in my mid-teens trying my utmost over several weeks, even months, to get Frost's 'Birches' lodged in my brain just as a self-challenge although up to then I'd never heard of that poet. It was chosen completely at random and is still 'up there', with Frost for decades having been one of my favourite scribers in that field.
DeleteI did once (quite recently) decide to read The Bible. I even went as far as to visit an Oxfam shop to buy a copy. Thank goodness they didn't have one, and I soon came to my senses!
ReplyDeleteI suppose you were looking for the King James version, the generally accepted 'authorised' translation, at least in most English-speaking countries? Or maybe you didn't give it much thought.
DeleteMy first reading of the whole thing was the Roman Catholic Douai-Rhiems version, the only then accepted translation when I was still a devout Catholic back in the 1960s.
Then I read the 'modern' translation of the New English Bible first published complete in 1970, which wasn't much better. Then in all my subsequent readings it's been the King James version of 1611, still the most commonly used translation. To my mind they're all as tedious, baffling, maddening - and spasmodically interesting, as each other.