What feeds you?

One of the blogs I read regularly is Red Stapler. Today, I read SueBob's post and she wrote:

It's always interesting to me, the things we need almost as much as food and water to keep us alive. Art. Drama. Literature. Music. Beauty. People will die for these things, literally. Something in us is fed by these crazy, abstract things we do. What feeds you?

What feeds me? What gives nourishment to my very soul?

Words. Music. Laughter. Beautiful art.

Words. Oh how I thrilled to learn to read them. I read banned books, blogs, the backs of boxes and bottles. In a pinch, I'll read the telephone book. I've read some 160 books so far this year, and I think my total will easily reach 200, despite my life butting into my reading time. lol I'll never understand people who "don't like to read", and since you're reading this I figure you probably don't either! lol I love to read things that challenge me ~ that make me think. I like to read scary pulp fiction, and thrillers, and true-crime novels, and short stories and poetry and quotes of famous people. I really love epitaphs. I write in my journal. I write notes to school and to friends and to strangers on the interwebs. Words ~ those of others and mine own ~ open my mind and my heart to the possibilities of the Universe.

Music. I was raised in the Church of Christ. We learn to sing harmony in preschool. LOL All CoC hymns are sung a capella. Verily, NO instruments other than the human voice are allow'd in the church. Regardless, I love listening to all kinds of music, and I love to dance. Gives you a general idea of how far from my roots I have grown, I suppose. ;) Watching a live performance of any piece of music thrills me to the bottom of my soul. Music can make me soar, cry, drive too fast on the highway, laugh out loud. It fills me up to the top and moves me in a way that nothing else can. Music can bend time and place and cross thousands of miles and hundreds and thousands of days.

Laughter ~ I try to exceed the recommended daily allowance for laughter. I love comics and puns and rhymes, pratfalls and comedic geniuses. I love talking to my family and friends and hearing their latest stories and jokes. I really love it when my daughter finds something I said or did hilarious, because guaranteed one or both of us will wind up with the hiccups from "too much" mirth. Laughter feeds my heart.

Art ~ I just love to look at beautiful things. Art can mean, quite literally, anything ~ from a gorgeous patina on an old lawn chair, to Nature's color palette in a Texas sunset, to a silky, cool river rock, to Fine Art in a museum somewhere. (I'm particularly fond of two of our local museums.) Since I've never been able to draw or paint or sculpt, and my powers over Nature are somewhat lacking, I make scrapbooks and collages, using scraps of paper, cloth, pressed flowers, ephemera...gluing it all together to please myself. Art fills my eyes and my hands with beauty and peace.

So, what feeds you? What moves you? What makes your heart sing and your soul soar? Do tell ~ and leave a link so I can read what you have to say.