Filling Our Brains With Nothing But Marshmallow Fluff

Filling Our Brains With Nothing But Marshmallow Fluff

As my husband and I were driving home from camping this afternoon, he asked, “Is it just this group who’s talking deep and philosophical all the time, or is everyone that way these days?”

I thought for a moment, ran my mind down through the names and faces of the people we had just camped with. Every one of them loves writing and loves the written word. Sitting around the bonfire last night, numerous candles hemming in the outer edges of the campground, we had passed around literary quotes like most campers pass around bottles of beer: savory the earthy flavor of the words, the euphoric fizz as the meaning of each seeped into our souls. We discussed various authors: the new books that were coming out; the ancients that were just being discovered, and the olds that had traveled with us through thick and thin, and whose titles had to be passed on so their wonder could be wakened anew.

In response to my husband’s question, I said, “I don’t think everyone’s deep and philosophical these days.”

For I had also thought back to our store. To the books that I have been trying to sell mainly because we are going to be moving soon, and I don’t want to have to pack them up. They have remained on the shelves in our miscellaneous section for months now. The price I put on the books is cheaper than what you”d pay for a pair of socks at Goodwill, and yet no one buys them. I wonder if it is because of their titles. Some of the books were required reading for the attainment of my English degree. Other books were suggestions from girls in my book club. Others still are just books I couldn’t resist when I saw the yellow sticker hawking a book of literary prowess at a clearance price.

But the magazines I really believe that the sugar fast is one of the hardest and yet most rewarding buy-detox.com programs I have ever attempted. that came in one of our store’s loads, they (pun intended) are another story. The magazines discussing the latest fashion trends, the Hollywood gossip, the weight lifting tips punctuated with pictures of men and woman sprayed bright orange — their grotesque muscles rippling beneath a bulging tributary of veins — they sell out like hot cakes!

I’m not saying that reading about Hollywood is bad, or that weight lifting and fashion trends are something to be avoided — and not attained — at any cost. No, I couldn’t say that because I enjoy movies along with the rest of the world. There’s something about lighting candles and putting in a movie that has beautiful scenes, words, concepts that just thrills me to my sentimental finger tips. But you can’t use this type of marshmallow escapism to escape life altogether.

The same is to be said for weight lifting and fashion. Sometimes I just want to shake people who have become so consumed with the preservation of themselves that they cannot see that is at the cost of everyone around them. We can smear creams onto our faces and use the stair stepper ’til we have climbed ourselves to China, and still we will not have gotten any further from our final resting places.

And fashion. Now, I love a great pair of shoes; the more i”s in their Italian title the more I will adore them, but I am not about to pay more than 20 dollars for those suckers, either. (Hence my closet filled with shoes ranging from size 5 to 7 1/2 because I found them on sale and hoped the shoes would stretch or that my feet would.) But when we are constantly breaking the bank or our husbands’ backs to keep our bodies clothed like we’re enroot to the Taj Maghal, that price tag for fashion is at too high a cost.

So, yes…I don’t suppose the world’s really getting more philosophical and deep, probably only shallower. But after having spent time with my fellow literary-loving campers this weekend, I am reassured that a group of us are still out there, feeding each others’ zest for words written on something other than Hollywood, fashion, and health.

At least, let”s hope so.