Found in my Apple Notes, 4AM
I read in a most peculiar way.
A book is not meant to be inhaled in one go. It’s not safe to do so; FDA approval still pending, is what my friend in library sciences tells me.
“Read, in the name of your Lord, who has created.” declares the Quran. I gulp down rows and rows of symbols, washing it down with a healthy mix of skepticism and absent-mindedness.
I do not know why I read.
I certainly don’t remember any of it the morning after, reeling from last night’s excess. It is a blur, a haze of fuzzy facts and a cloud of conceptual meatballs. I am an alcoholic.
“In alcohol, you will find good and you will find evil, but surely one overpowers the other.”
I’m in the mosque. Croons the preacher, cracking open a hardcover, satin embroidered navy blue Quran. The calligraphy is flourishing, bold, dark, and naked. A horde of men sit like ducks in outfits of austere white, staring at the hardcover, making out the familiar lines yet infinitely foreign.
A month later, I know nothing; I declare intellectual bankruptcy.
I read compulsively, scurrying over the lines like a New Yorker rushing to get a bagel at 9 on a Tuesday, trading the lofty morality of a second-hand first-generation immigrant for crust, warmth, and cream cheese.
I read about great men and their daily habits for maximum effectiveness in my PJs, crumbs from my PB&J sandwich crowding the blooming stubble.
All reading is fantasy. To read is to pass down on life. It is not your own life. You live vicariously, embodying the hopes and heartbreaks of souls that are not your own. It is trespassing on history, navel gazing at a time travelling microscope.
Reader’s Digest was my family’s favourite magazine. We all suffer from the sickness, my mother and sister in particular, of being obtuse-intolerant. We cannot digest knowledge, accept facts for truth. RD has changed our lives.