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Dec. 23rd, 2004 03:49 pmToday I read a graphic novel called "Cages" and I realized something revealing. I have a sensual realtionship with books, something that goes beyond being someone who likes to read. The book I read today is a bit oversized, thick and the pages glossy. The cover, hardcover, was smooth against my hands and I stroked it. Fasinating novel, engrossing and full of those strange artsy truths that graphic novels favor. I enjoyed it immensly. When I really like a book, I am wholly involved in it. My hands stroke the over, the stiff smell of the pages invades my nose and my mind is completltly enganged. Intrustions of time and reality are unwelcome.
When I finished, I hugged the book to my chest, felt it press agasint my breast and belly through my sweater and I stroked the cover as I thought about the content. To read a book, to truly read it, is to consume it utterly. Physically, I was trying to take it into myself just as my mind enfolded the concepts. No one home, in a pool of light in otherwise dark house, curled around this book and I thought, yes. This is a realtionship, me and this book in this sliver of time. I am interacting with something that is more then a passive object. There is a movement here, a conversation. I stroke the cover as I would lay a hand on a dear friend's arm. Read it as I would listen to someone telling me something gripping.
In the end, I must stray from my new friend, but I will return to it again and again as I do all the books that I truly love. It is difficult to give away dear friends who by turns have taught me something, distracted me when reality was unbearable and driven away the ghosts in the darkest of hours. It is nearly impossible to tell which book will be just another book and which will lodge itself in my mind.
So that is what I am looking for. That is my little epiphany. I am searching for a man who will be like a book to me, one that I will never quite finish reading. But more then that, a book that reads me while I read it, caressing pages and twining ordinary things into an extrodinary jackdaws nest of fantastical every day life.
When I finished, I hugged the book to my chest, felt it press agasint my breast and belly through my sweater and I stroked the cover as I thought about the content. To read a book, to truly read it, is to consume it utterly. Physically, I was trying to take it into myself just as my mind enfolded the concepts. No one home, in a pool of light in otherwise dark house, curled around this book and I thought, yes. This is a realtionship, me and this book in this sliver of time. I am interacting with something that is more then a passive object. There is a movement here, a conversation. I stroke the cover as I would lay a hand on a dear friend's arm. Read it as I would listen to someone telling me something gripping.
In the end, I must stray from my new friend, but I will return to it again and again as I do all the books that I truly love. It is difficult to give away dear friends who by turns have taught me something, distracted me when reality was unbearable and driven away the ghosts in the darkest of hours. It is nearly impossible to tell which book will be just another book and which will lodge itself in my mind.
So that is what I am looking for. That is my little epiphany. I am searching for a man who will be like a book to me, one that I will never quite finish reading. But more then that, a book that reads me while I read it, caressing pages and twining ordinary things into an extrodinary jackdaws nest of fantastical every day life.
