The thing I enjoy perhaps the most about time to do with as I please is the chance to read. While I suppose if I were not the voracious reader I am, I could read a bit every night and set it aside like most people do. However that is not the way I enjoy reading. When I read I consume a book, or rather it consumes me. I must find out what is going to happen next, and all the assorted whos whys and whatits that go along with that. In the past two days I’ve read four books of a seven book series. Normally I won’t touch a book simply because once I’ve picked it up, until the back flap has been closed I’m there for the duration, this can be quite tricky if the book is say approximately 500-600 pages. That means the block of time I’m committed too is well beyond the time I can reasonably devote and as such there goes what little sleep I had afforded myself for the evening.
Since I’ve had no where of import to go and nothing of import to do save for laundry I’m currently avoiding, I took the pleasure of beginning a series. I’ve read it before; it’s one of my favorites. As I finished the first book that I began at midnight, I decided since I had the time I’d keep reading. I finished the third before finally deciding that the weight of my eyelids could no longer be ignored.
The fourth I just put down and while my brain is walking into the library room at this very moment to locate the fifth I remain here typing. I know if I go to get the fifth I’ll have to read that, as well as the sixth and seventh before tomorrow morning. Books are addictive.
A friend of mine is married to a woman that works in a library. I marvel at her restraint. I know she enjoys reading as much as I do, and yet she can have this job, and not get carried away by the books. I can only say it's truly impressive, and she has much more self control than I could ever hope to possess. Can you imagine being surrounded by books day in and day out and be able to still do…anything aside from reading them? I’d be living there, reading through section by section. Reading simply by starting at the top of the first aisle and working my way back and around would probably be easiest; I’m not that fond of numbers to go by the Dewey Decimal System. I’d end up living there, a book in hand as I wandered about forgetting all other things of import save where the book desired me to go.
Reading is the singular time in which I do not have music playing. I couldn’t hear it anyway. When I read all other sound and perception is completely removed. They don’t exist. So since there’s little point in playing music I will have to work to ignore anyway, easiest to simply not play it. It can and does happen that when I read I fail to hear someone standing next to me speaking directly to me. Happens rather frequently actually and Matt is quite used to it. I do not feel a tap on the shoulder, do not hear or see anything aside from the words on the page. The only way to get my attention is to divert my eyes from seeing the words on that page. This is easily done by turning off the light or tossing a piece of paper over the page. I’m not saying this may not irritate me especially if I’m at a climactic point, but that this will get my attention. Matt is good enough at reading the emotion in my face to know if I’m at a point it’s best not to disturb me unless he wants a monosyllabic response that I spend no time considering.
I was very young when I was first brought to the library. I was four years old, knew how to read and had gotten my own library card, exciting times for a four year old. I walked in to what can only be described as one of the oldest, tallest and biggest buildings in Wilkes-Barre. It was gorgeous, grand and awe inspiring to me at the time. That's it in the picture there. I remember the smell distinctly, it was…history, quite literally. I was never very good about seeing much of anything, surely since no one, not even I knew I couldn’t see anything until I was seven. The smell however was something I will not forget. When I go home, and I take Matt there to ohh and ahh over the superb variety of every bibliophiles fantasies it’s still the same smell. Every week we’d take the bus, make our selections and carry them back home. There were new treasures to be indulged, new places to see, and go to in the airlines of the young mind. You could only take out ten books at a time, but that was ok since,
well I couldn’t carry more than ten books, and I was not the only one picking out books, which meant my selection had increased exponentially by the time the rewards had been laid out on the dining room table. We’d all stand around for a moment, looking over the vast expanse of knowledge laid out before us, we’d each grab one and dash off to our favorite reading spots until the supper bell rang and we’d be roused from our interludes. The bell was there because I was not the only one that was difficult to rouse from reading; in fact it’s a family trait. Though I am one of the more difficult ones, and if I had found just the right spot in the hay loft, I not only missed the supper bell but it would be well into nightfall before I realized that I could no longer see a single word on the page. It was or rather could be difficult to spot a small still body lying amidst some thousand or so hay bales, especially one that didn’t hear anyone standing below the stack they were laying on at the time. My Grandfather was usually good about hearing the page turning though and climbing up to put his hand over the pages causing me to look square into a giant weathered hand spread out across them. I’d look up, he’d grin and tell me it was time to eat, or that he’d brought me a dish to eat and slide it up onto the hay bales beside me. I’m not sure why sometimes I could eat out there and others I couldn’t. Maybe because they wanted to see me from time to time, I’m not really sure. It’s hard to say why adults do the things they do when you’re a child. Generally they just seem mysterious and rather capricious. Then again, the same could be said for the reverse.I would wake up in the summer, dash to get my chores done, finish those to inspection quality, and run to grab the next book. I had if I planned it properly enough time to read the entire book before anyone else was free to play. Once the day was over and nighttime chores had finished as well on occasion I’d dare on “non library days” to sneak off to either my Appaloosa’s back to read quite comfortably on her couch like back while she wandered about in the pasture, or to the hay loft. It’s not that I wasn’t easily found had I been listening to someone calling for me, simply that I tuned out all other things. If I was lying, backwards mind you across my horse, I’d scritch her tail button absently as I read which caused her to prance about ever so slightly. It kept the flies off her, me and my book. Easter, she was a good old girl. She was old when I was born, named for John Steinbeck’s book “The Red Pony”. She was after all a red Appaloosa though who named her I’m not sure. She was a good horse, cared much more about eating than anything else, loved ice cream cones that I shared with her each Sunday after church and was always willing
to walk around while I read on her rump. She wasn’t really “my” horse, but somewhere over the years we bonded and she stopped being my Grandfather’s horse and became mine. At least that’s how he described it. I think it was the time we spent together doing the things we truly enjoyed, she ate, I read, we were both very happy. I doubt the ice cream cones, and assorted other goodies horses really shouldn’t eat that I shared with her on a daily basis hurt any. I really can’t think of any sort of treat, dessert or candy I didn’t give her at least a third of. Another third went of course to my St. Bernard and the last bit was mine. It was really not much of a wonder to any why the old girl was so plump, and why my Grandfather spent so much time lunging her to get the weight off. He never said anything to me about not feeding her though. I think it made him happy to know she cared for me, or perhaps that I cared for her, or maybe both. In either case she was the best read Appaloosa any had ever seen since I read aloud every book I took out to her from her rump. She liked it.During the other seasons night was the time for reading. We weren’t allowed to watch more than an hour of television a day, and the rest of the night we all had our heads in books. My Gram is still convinced more than an hour a day will rot your brain right out of your head. I’m pretty sure she’s right. “It doesn’t make you think for yourself, children need to learn to think, all that does is think for them. It’s no way to live.” That’s what she always says. To this day I can’t sit still for more than an hour to watch television. I never even saw “The Wizard of Oz” until I was 23, it was almost 3 hours long, so as a kid if you have one hour or viewing to do, and that’s it you surely don’t pick the three hour long movie you’ll never see the end of. You pick the hour you can watch from start to finish. The singular exception to this was the Sunday Disney movies. We could watch all of those. They were two hours long and everyone watched them together.
During the fall, winter and spring there were two places I could be found reading. I would be tucked in neatly in the hay bales cuddled up with my St. Bernard under a saddle blanket or squashed in between the radiator and my dresser. It depended upon how cold it was. Even as a small child I hated the cold.
Now I usually read in the office which is where we spend most of our time, or on occasion in the living room. It’s colder out there so that’s usually only in the summer. I still bring my dog with me to read, and now, having two that are truly mine and a third that borrows me on occasion when Matt isn’t home, I always have warm bodies to lie next to me while I read. Dislodging them when I’m going to get the next book from the other room can be a bit difficult as they all tend to be arranged neatly so as to prevent me from moving at all. I no longer have a couch width horse to lay upon for reading, but a normal couch will do in a pinch. They eat less too.
I know a few people who have only read a book or perhaps two in their entire lives. I find that frightening. I wonder where their brain goes to do the sort of traveling that allows you to let go of all other things for a while. Perhaps they don’t, and that I find more frightening still. Reading is a perhaps not escape, that’s not really what I’m looking for, but release I think. It lets you shed all things that weigh upon you, freeing you if only for that time while you read to think on other things, put the ruminations aside, and live for the moment in the moment. I think it’s good to let yourself shed that for a bit, for once you come back to it things seem different, and you can examine them from new angles as they repopulate your mind bit by bit. It’s also a great way to spend some quality time with a furry companion who wants nothing more than to be next to or near you. This can be quite tricky with cats as they like to warm the pages as you read forcing you to dislodge them at each page turning. My old cat Reial was famous for that. With her it was simpler to plop her on my chest and hold the book in the air. That way she could put her paws over my eyes instead, making the page turning simpler, but the reading more difficult. With cats everything is a compromise.
The dogs all await me to go and get the next book in the series and I can no longer fail to comply. The ruminations that floated about within my brain have been set to paper so to speak and I am now free to continue on my literary journey once again.
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