unreading
For reasons I don’t fully understand, I have not been able to concentrate on reading this year. Perhaps it is because so much of my working time is spent reviewing words on a screen that when I am through, I no longer feel the need to look at more words.
This does not seem like quite the right explanation, though, because I have managed to spend rather too much time reading essays on the internet. Their ephemerality is appealing – one must read them now, because who knows if they will exist tomorrow. A false sense of scarcity created by medium.
Occasionally a book pulls me out of this featureless, quicksand landscape, and I am able to read for a little while. Perhaps I am drawn into the mood of River or The Taiga Syndrome or something similar by the curious affectless fecklessness of the narrator, or perhaps these are qualities I am imagining. They draw me out of myself, out of my habits, out of the room – for at least a moment.
In a distant room, a dog barks. It is nearly time to sleep.