Reading Still

Dear Eugene,

I can't recall exactly what you've said--it might not even be a sentence or a piece or even a single book of yours that I've read--but I do remember one day waking up to the rude realization that I've never learned how to read, decades since I've become a serious reader.

Even now sometimes I would regress to being a hunter-gatherer of fragmented information by skimming through a book, skipping pages to glean what I think is useful to me at the very short-sighted moment, a "desecration" (that's what you called it) exacerbated by the convenience of italicized nuggets authors would sprinkle on the pages to speak to my very sickness.  I even turned the blessing of my new e-reader into pogo-stick of a curse, hopping between books, being everywhere but going nowhere.

Restless.

I have my excuses: life is too short for long books; I can do many things at the same time and do them all well; I just couldn't get into the topic/characters/plot given my current state of mind.  I wouldn't say none of these are legitimate reason to not finish a book.  Sometimes a book is just a most unexpected disappointment, or a monumental bore, or too demanding that I need an encyclopedia on top of a dictionary to stay afloat.  Or just plain bad.

Still.

Still I must keep in mind what you've taught me, as Wendell Berry puts it: "There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places."  Reading is a sacred act, so is peeling an orange or pulling the curtains in the morning to let the sun come in.  One cannot seriously be a lover of God's words if he is a vulgar reader of everything else.

I love the smell of citrus on my fingers, as they have now.

Yours, Alex

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