As I sit on my sunporch, in my small apartment cramped full of so many books that they are, for lack of money and shelf space, now taking over the floor like mini city-scapes, I feel inextricably sad.
This could be the remnants of the last book, Her Fearful Symmetry, still exiting my system, but it reminds me of the days when I worked at the library, shelving books in the biography section and always, upon entering those stacks as if walking through a curtain of emotion, I would become so sad that I would need to sit. There are too many books here, I thought. I'll never be able to read them all. And the sadness would fill me to my core. As soon as I left that section the sadness lifted.
The odd part about it is, I'm not really into biographies. Sure, I went through a phase when I read every artist's bio I could get my hands on, but that was primarily because I was teaching Art History to college students at the time and wanted to at least come across as knowing more than they did. I've even managed to scumble through the occasional presidential biography, but I don't know why THIS section, and THESE stories affected me so.
Now as I sift through the myriad of sites on the Internet, dedicated to books - book lists, book reviews, book awards - again I think to myself, There are too many books here, I'll never be able to read them all, and a ping of sadness seeps in. This is the calm, I think. I have just left one storm, I am still watching it as it pulls away. This one lasted several months. Several months of insatiable reading, and now...
Now, I am entering the eye. The time when I cease to fervently and manically devour books. When I actually look up and notice how the world around me moves, how the landscape has shifted. Sometimes the eye lasts a week, sometimes several weeks. And when it passes, I am once again caught up in the intensity of needing to read everything in sight. Needing to play catch up for the time lost not reading.
I didn't used to be like this. I didn't used to read.
Labels: Reading, reading list