Open Book

I have the figure of someone who loves to read. And I do, folded like a chair, wedged into the crook of the sofa's embrace, for hours. When I read, I forget I have limbs, I forget I have ribs, there is nothing of me below my neck, I am a sofa and a blanket and the empty length between my eyes and the page where electrons skitter and lurch and splay.

I write best in my head, when I am walking, and by the time I get home and get the words on the page they seem small and colorless, like beach glass sitting on a desk. I never stop walking to write but I often stop writing to walk.

In fact, there are many things I do instead of sitting down to write. Mostly, I read. I also buy groceries, wait in lines, fidget, hug Luke, chop vegetables, whisk dressing, write email, edit email, read email, reread email, wonder if anyone has sent me any email since the last time I checked, walk up the hill to my apartment slowly, walk up the hill to my apartment at a moderate pace, make sure I have everything I need for work the next day, call my Mom, and draft long lists of things I must absolutely do next weekend or else risk sacrificing everything that is most important to me.

When I do finally write, the topic that I most often write about is why I write or why I don't write or what I should write about. I probably write the words "write" and "I" more often than any others.

But I hate reading about writing. This may come as a surprise to many people, especially people who buy me gifts. Writing is primarily solitary, certainly dull as dirt to watch, and something I am fundamentally familiar with. Reading about writing just makes me wonder why I'm not writing.

Sometimes I wonder who other people become when they read. Do they identify with the hero, feel the wind on their face? Do they wear the mantle of narrative omniscience, their features cool, composed, watchful? Are they flooded with an authorial sense of power? An editorial urge to tinker?

Or do they slip themselves into the surface of the text, like a plank of shadow in a raft of shade, and simply disappear?