Wednesday night, I worked at the bar. Wednesday night, nobody came into the bar to order anything. And thus, I was left with nothing to do. Usually, out of desperate boredom, I pick up a notebook and scrawl a few things down -- generally nothing or any particular interest to anyone -- but Wednesday night, I picked up a book instead.
I'd brought with me a copy of Milan Kundera's "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting." Norman lent it to me recently, and I'd read about ten pages of it. It didn't really seem all that interesting -- sex and communism ARE a little overdone -- but I'd liked the other book I'd read by the same author ("The Unbearable Lightness of Being" which also heavily emphasized themes of communism and fucking...), and so I decided to give it a real chance...
I read 100 pages into it before I could move, even to get another soda. I stopped answering my co-workers when they asked what I was reading. I stopped NOTICING that my co-workers were trying to engage me in conversation. I lost track of time. I lost track of myself. I lost track of the entire world. It just vanished. EVERYTHING lay in that book. My entire consciousness was wrapped around it.
It forced me to think. It forced me to analyze; not just to understand the plot, but to WONDER about the plot. I LOVE the feeling of understanding beautiful symbolism for the first time. It's as though I'm coming to an understanding of the entire meaning of life.
I didn't put that book down until my boss turned the lights out in the kitchen. I would have been content to sit in the bar until dawn, finishing the book.
Instead, they sent me home.
I went to Norman's house. I lay on his futon reading as he played his guitar. I had to force myself again to put it down and go to bed. I could have happily stayed up all night reading. Instead, I lay happily in bed with Norman, thinking about geniuses... About genuises who write books, and geniuses who understand them, and geniuses who lend them to me... GAHD, I was happy.
I've always loved reading. In fourth grade, my teacher held me after class and told me to STOP reading so much, because I wasn't paying attention to anything else. This was after I'd missed my bus a good 10 times because I'd had my head buried in a book... In the last few years, though, my tastes have tended toward junk-food books more than anything else, with the exception of Tom Robbins. Not that there's anything wrong with Stephen King, but...
I love it when people make me think.
I love being asked questions, being made to ponder things -- not just "what's your favorite salad dressing" questions, but questions about things both abstract and pertinent: like communism and sex.
I love losing myself and simultaneously finding myself.
I love Norman for making me read. (And a few other reasons too...)
I have to go... I have a few chapters left...
Love,
~Helena*