Books

I added a few new things to the side panel, list of links and books. I'm posting this for the general public and for one particular friend. I had a conversation with her about a book that changed my life, well, precisely described an aspect of my life. What's the Pig Outdoors? A Memoir of Deafness by Henry Kisor.
I had thought I posted about it before but apparently that was the focus of some of my posts while I still had a myspace account.
Sometime around two years ago I had this spontaneous idea to write a book about my life being hard of hearing. I want to educate the public on what it is like to not be fully deaf yet not fully hearing. I have been in the middle of two worlds since birth. I only started writing notes on different topics I wanted to touch on, a draft of the introduction, and random sentences on scraps of paper. I'm no writer and I'm far too young to have experienced enough of life to have a fully evolved book on the subject. I have more to learn. It is still a plan though. However, I may not have strong feelings to get it published but I will be satisfied just to have completed it for my own sake of self-learning and what not.
But back to the other book, it had been in my house my whole life. The past ten years or so it had been sitting on our bookshelves in the living room. I’ve stared at it countless times. Always reading along the binding “What’s the Pig Outdoors?” I never understood it, yet never took it upon myself to pick it up. Finally one day over a year ago I took a closer look and noticed the writing within the purple lines. I had never noticed it before; there it said “A Memoir of Deafness.” I immediately felt my heart race and opened the book for the first time and started reading at once. I fell in love with it instantly. On the first page, fine handwriting states this as a gift to my parents from a woman whose name I did not recognize. Later that day when my dad arrived home I showed him what I discovered. He told me that a friend of his mother gave him that book when I was born.
Words cannot describe the excitement, awe, sadness, amusement, and enlightenment I felt while reading this amazing book. He put all my experiences and thoughts in perfectly clear writing, completely simplified thought. Here I was thinking of the things I wanted to write about and he just took those words right out of my mouth. I do not mean that in a negative way whatsoever. I’m still, to this day, in awe with the fact that he and many others have experienced and acknowledged the very same things I have.
I plan to read it again soon, for many things he has said put things in perspective for me. And many things I will never forget also. I always think about the fact he mentioned about there being several publications about the deaf yet hardly any written by the deaf themselves. This only further inspired me to write my story.