In the gradual withering time, precipitate hobbies

"Twilight Will End" by Diana Asir

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In the previous section, we talked about Asir's recollection of caring for his sick old friend Barry in his later years. In the twilight of life, illness, pain, aging and powerlessness gradually fill the living space with smaller and smaller living spaces. So, what else can make the mood a little more cheerful, a little calmer, and a fight against the emptiness of the soul? Asir believes that you need to find your hobby and indulge in it. In this section, let's take a look at which hobbies accompany Asir and dispel her loneliness of living alone all year round?

Write literary criticism

The first is writing. Asir said that she read the biography of Mrs. Geskell written by Jeanne Oglo and found that if anyone could have a high level of writing, it was equivalent to gaining the energy of ten people.

Mrs. Gaskell was both a wife and a mother, and she accepted the obligation of marriage and the education of her children voluntarily and even happily, never complaining about her husband or daughter. Even when life is very busy, she can find a space that is completely her own to concentrate on writing, no matter how limited it may be.

In the eyes of many, such a life is monotonous, however, in Asir's opinion, Mrs. Gaskell is full of dazzling vitality, an ability that many people simply do not have.

Asir herself is like this, she often writes articles for the Literary Review, and although she doesn't earn much money, she finds it very interesting, because when faced with a book, people tend to really open their hearts. In addition, writing literary criticism has the special advantage of prompting you to read books that you might not normally read, and discover a new world that you would not otherwise be able to access before.

study

Asir's other hobby is reading. As a young man, Asir read almost exclusively novels, and in her more than fifty years of work, as a veteran literary editor, she was most interested in novels.

However, in her old age, she basically stopped reading novels. She said that the appeal of a novel depends more on the writer's imagination and also requires excellent talent. Perhaps because of her age, she felt that she had become picky, like a person with a lost appetite who would only be tempted by a particularly rare delicacy.

Moreover, after going through most of her life, she no longer needs to think about the relationship between people and people, especially love relationships, as she did when she was young, she hopes to swim in the field of non-fiction and obtain material to expand her interests.

For example, she opened her eyes to understanding the early stages of the Industrial Revolution through four books:

The first was The Hall of Demons, which Humphrey Jennings spent years collecting and collating with his daughter, Mary Lew, with the help of Charles March. The subtitle of the book is "The Coming of the Machine Age in the Eyes of Contemporary Observers, 1660-1886." The book is extremely rich in content, with high-quality writing and writing, from which you can see how the edifice of idealism has collapsed and become greedy and dirty.

The second book is a biography, written by Brian Dolan, the life of Josiah Wedgwood, one of the leaders of the Industrial Revolution: the father of British ceramics, and witnesses a great moment in human history.

The third book, also a biography, is the letters of Charles Darwin. These letters record activities such as banging rocks, collecting shells, dissecting plants, and observing birds, demonstrating a passion for learning through the practice of science.

The fourth book is the life story of the English printmaker and illustrator Thomas Biek, told by Jenny Urgelo.

Asir has read a lot of non-fiction, and these four books are the most outstanding of them.

In addition to these, Asir is fascinated by another type of book, which she used to enjoy when she was younger. Of course, it's just pure entertainment, such as "BJ's Single Diary", or the popular historical romance novels of earlier times, and sometimes she will take out a copy and flip through it just to reminisce about the past.

The greatest blessing in old age

Writing, reading, seems to be the most common activity for a cultural person. Asir said that perhaps because he is getting older, these activities have become more and more valuable, and the sense of enjoyment of indulging in them has become more and more intense. She thinks the best part of her later years was that she was fortunate enough to discover her writing abilities and is grateful for it.

For most of his life, Asir never expected to become a writer. She began her literary career after retiring at the age of 76, writing novels and several memoirs. Little did she know when she wrote "Twilight Is Coming to an End" that it would later win her a Costa-Biography Prize and make her famous.

While most writers may have discovered their interest in writing early in life, Asir was a child who loved to read and did not aspire to write, and in her youth, "books" were almost synonymous with "novels", and she felt she lacked the imagination needed to become a novelist. Because she liked to read what other people wrote, she later embarked on the path of editing. It is precisely because of her work as an editor that she has slowly accumulated her creativity over the years.

This power is manifested in a small form at first, like a small hot spring in a volcanic rock area that occasionally bubbles up. At first, Asir wrote nine short stories, all of which were written without any plan, and one of them won the Observer Short Story Award, which made her feel a drunken excitement.

However, Asir was not always able to write a lot of thoughts, and when she wrote the tenth story, she had only written two pages, and then she stopped abruptly, and she did not write anything for about a year. Until one day, when Asir was rummaging through something, he accidentally saw the beginning of these two pages, so he picked it up and rewrote it, and slowly wrote his first book, "The Long Book as a Sue".

For Asir, the process of writing this time is not only to find an outlet for the accumulated stories, but also to have a healing effect. She had a heartbreaking experience, and after that, she slowly learned to accept and help herself live quietly and comfortably, and that book records that sad experience and also makes her accept the fact that she once lived a very failed life as a woman.

After the book was written, the sense of failure that had always existed in Asir's heart disappeared, and she felt that she had reached the happiest stage of her life, and she was convinced that writing was her favorite thing, and she hoped to write more in the future.

From the beginning of her writing with the need to "heal", she later found that she could write happily just because she was interested in a certain subject, so at the age of 80, she wrote another work, Unabridged. The book gave her the best experience of almost all her writing experience, and as soon as it was written, it was accepted by the publisher she respected, and when it went public, it was widely acclaimed.

In the next two years, Asir wrote another "Yesterday Morning", which was also recognized, which filled her with gratitude and made her very happy.

The harvest of age

Asir said that as she grew older, she received three unexpected gains. One is that she can write works that are recognized by the public at an advanced age, which she herself never expected.

The second takeaway is that none of her works involve a deep level, and all the books can be easily read.

When you are young, a large part of your "self" is created by how others perceive you, and this trait often persists into middle age. Asir said that in her early years of adulthood, she often felt her pride hurt by other people's perceptions. However, as the age passes, the "self" is no longer based on the evaluation of others, and the shackles that imprisoned the spiritual world in the past begin to fall off little by little until they die.

In her forties, Asir was assumed to be able to publish books and write, and these positive responses gave her a lot of confidence. In her eighties, she found that what the outside world thought of her was no longer important to her, and that it was a more peaceful and open sense of liberation. In her life, she has never been so comfortable and long-term as she is now, enjoying herself as she is, and not having to force herself to meet the expectations of others.

The third benefit of old age is that Asir finds that he no longer feels embarrassed by his shyness.

In the past, as an editor, her job required her to occasionally speak in public, and she was always afraid that she would be nervous and cold, so she would prepare in advance every time, write down what she was going to say, print it, and read it out when the time came.

One live event was to introduce some books on cooking to a group of well-dressed ladies whose husbands were businessmen in the tableware business and were meeting in the local area at a grand upscale hotel.

Asir's speech was arranged in a relatively small and dark room, and when she entered the room, she smelled a strong smell in the room, which intensified her inner tension. Unexpectedly, in the end, no one came, Asir was greatly relieved, but at the same time, this relief was mixed with a hint of shame, because he lacked the ability to calmly speak in public.

But after escaping this time and next time, the editor couldn't hide behind the scenes forever, so when it was time to give a public speech again, the publisher pushed Asir to the literary festival, she was nervous. Moreover, she couldn't prepare for this event in advance, because the club arranged a three-person interview for her, where three autobiographers discussed each other's motivation for writing books, which may have a lot of unpredictable topics, which is a strong test of the editor's on-site adaptability and guidance ability, and Asir has no confidence in whether it can be a successful interview.

But luckily, the interview was held in the town of Haiyi, which is a welcoming place and the atmosphere at the event will be lively. Second, among the three authors was a lady named Andrea, whose work Asir was familiar with, and the two had a correspondence with each other. Based on this relationship, when the two met in the hotel, Andrea warmly hugged Asir and led her into the interview tent, this intimate opening diluted Asir's inner anxiety and fear, and everyone chatted freely, and was soon drowned out by intimate and interesting conversations.

It was a very beautiful interview, Asir and the authors exchanged life experiences with each other, and when she looked out of the tent, she saw the joy on the faces of the crowded, the anticipation of good times, which made her more relaxed and realized that she really wanted to communicate with everyone. That night, she showed something that had been hidden in her heart for a long time, and everyone burst into laughter. She was surprised to find that when facing the crowd, she had a lot to say, and she could have a good conversation.

Since then, standing in front of the public has ceased to be a difficult task, but has become pleasant, and Asir has always been able to easily establish the atmosphere of conversation when he later appears on the show. This makes her feel that the growth accumulated over the years, the self-discovery and affirmation, can make people do things that they couldn't do before.

In the journey of growing old, people are ushering in the harvest and looking at the past at the same time.