Books..boring....books

I’m giving myself away. Elaborate and unfettered, but burdened nonetheless.

Cooped up and kept in, although I could go out for a walk. See the thrift shop down on Broadway, look at odd clothes, slightly ill fitting, and piles of books, dusty but wanted for the secrets of the world they may be hiding away between their covers. I like books, but sometimes I think that I like the physical reality of books more than the words and stories located and held within their pages. There is so much possibility in the idea of a book, carried in its first line or in a well written back cover description.

There is also so much disappointment in the discovery that a book is not perfect. I’m in someone else’s apartment surrounded by packed boxes, many of which are filled, I’m pretty certain, with elegantly stuffed piles of well read books. Books that look well read, but also books whose print has become faint from fingers tracing along their lines, and embedding the words in invisible ink all along each and every sight to image pathway in the brain.

I am not a good reader, I don’t remember what I read, and can’t regurgitate it. It’s a question of focus, a notion of speed and the directions my mind gets itself distracted while interpreting print. Individual words make themselves known to me, and sometimes even a complete sentence, but paragraph or page retained and transferred from hand held to eyes read to brain embedded is unlikely.

I enjoy what I read, I love language, but it tends to flow through me as the images contained within, as colours and sensations, rather than concepts and ideas. I’m not much of a concept person. This is probably why I can read books multiple times and still be surprised: I can never remember what happens within a book. The skeleton basics of a plotline, but not the intricacies or moments.

And then there’s the whole matter of what I read. I often find my brain all heavy and fogged up, and reading tends to give me more of a headache, so I often spend time listening to music instead of reading. Sometimes it’s the opposite, I get a terrible headache from almost any kind of music, and so I try to watch a quiet movie, or read a simple book. Which is why I have a significant history of reading books considered trashy or childish. Classic literature always tends to give me a headache. Although at one point I was actually pursuing an honours degree in English, the idea of having to read all of those thick, reason and intellect filled books gives me a headache. The very idea of it.

Now, short poetry I can handle. If it’s more than two pages long, I don’t even want to begin. I don’t have the patience. And I get too many headaches.