Ok, fine...

That was a fairly pathetic hue-ing and cry-ing....but i don't have anything else interesting to post at the moment, so...here y' are.

Enjoy.

The Hesitant Reader

He sat, placed the book on the table in front of him, and prepared to read. He took a moment to take it in, its solidness, a thick, square object alone on the blank surface. What an odd thing, that something so small, so simple, ordinary paper spattered with ink, stacked upon itself like the layers of tree trunk it had once been, could carry so much within it. It took ideas, notions, plans, imaginings and fleeting images from the secret places of passing thought, of uncertain memory, and made them real, freezing them in unchanging, perceivable shape, fixed expressions on an immortal face. Imprisoning a permanent imprint drawn out of the fast flowing river of memory, it had the power to rescue some things forever from forgetfulness. In it, something of a person, something of their thought, at least, could escape even death.

He held it in his hand, feeling its weight, it potential. He could not help feeling a quickening of excitement, of anticipation. It was more than a preserver of dead, frozen things, of course. It had a life, of sorts, of its own. He knew he could interact with what had been committed to this most unusual container- it could even reach out and transform something of him. It had the power to bring him into contact with people he had never met, people who had died long ago, people who, perhaps, had never even lived. He could converse with these people. He could sense something of their thoughts, their emotions, their moods. He could feel he knew them. Their words, their way of seeing the world, could become part of his. He could go to places he had not been, see through eyes not entirely his own. He could enter other worlds- worlds of possibility, worlds, perhaps, that could not exist in any other place. Things could be brought together, grouped, turned inside out, split - in these worlds, things could be made out of what would otherwise be called ideas, and these things could be positioned in relation to each other. Whole palaces could be built out of the intangible moments of thought, out of things which could be not be touched or seen in any other place, then explored, room by room.

With the spine resting on his hand, he gently moved his thumb over the edge of the pages, stopping in the middle, opening an inviting gap. He was about to begin an interaction with this book, but what form would it take? It could an engagement with the character of a battle, a conquest of territory and information, a struggle of opposing views, with only the winner left standing. Or it could be something more like a dance, the back and forth play of motion and response, whether executed according to formal, learned steps, or through rhythmic instinct. It could be a consuming - either slow, patiently chewed and digested rumination, or greedy, ravenous devouring, taking the text into himself and leaving nothing behind. He could lie back and let it wash over him, or he could force it to flow in a channel of his design. He could get caught up in its current and allow himself to be swept away, following the text wherever it took him, content to wash up on whatever bank it threw him on. He could also navigate that flow with a destination in mind.

Why was he reading? What was he coming to this book to obtain, to experience? What was he looking for? Pleasure, perhaps? Certainly it had the power to produce this. The flow of words, the music of sounds, could be enjoyed, as could the art of skillful construction. He could seek to be caught in the sweep of a story, its rising and falling, the fascination of characters, of living lives one cannot, or should not, live. He could be exhilarated by the sudden rushing in of a new understanding, or by the excitement of constructing something out of the puzzle pieces of ideas, the thrill of searching, digging, and finding treasure.

But this thing in his hand could do much more than amuse or entertain. How, again, should he read it? Should he look for something specific? Should he stare at it, past the surface of the page, until the components that constituted this text became apparent? Should he break it down and break it up, cut it open and dissect it? Was it important to know how it was put together and to what effect? Did the process of its construction matter, or only its existing structure? Was it a thing to be studied, so that one could understand it completely, definitively, possess it with certainty, know its substance, its meaning, without error? Or did it defy such analysis? Would it forever elude his attempts to grasp it, remaining a thing to be experienced as a mystery?

Should he enter it expecting to find something? Should he enter it with the interest of seeing what it had to say about certain aspects of his world? About culture? About power structures? About women? About reading? Dare he approach it for what he could get out of it – something he could use? Was he allowed to seek in this text examples to confirm a belief he already had formed? Could he use it as part of his own argument? Could he make it his own, do with it as he pleased, see in it what he chose, incorporate it into himself beyond distinction, or must he remain separate from it? Was it permitted for him to play with the book, to improvise in it and from it, to make it one theme in a larger symphony of words, to use parts of it as material in a new creation?

Was it even possible for to avoid merging himself, and what came with him, into the text? Could the book stand on its own? Was it really all alone in the middle of that table, or was it tied to a million other books stretching back through time, to the whole history of language, to the culture it came from, its history, to the personal history of the author? Was it possible to wrench it free from this web of attachments, and read it and it alone? And did it matter who he was, reading it, his gender, his culture, his position in society? Could he, and should he, remove such influences from his reading?

He furrowed his brow. This thing, this thing in his hand, did not spring from nothing, he knew. He was not completely alone with this book. There were likely other readers, but there was certainly, somewhere or at some point in history, at least one other involved in this book – an author. He wondered what his relationship was to this other as he read. Was he entering into a communication with someone? Sharing their experience, their thoughts? And who was that someone? Would he truly be able to see them in this thing they had brought into being? He might be able to know that other, perhaps even in ways they did not know themselves. Perhaps their secrets, their insides, that which was underneath driving them, without their being aware of it, would, to a careful reader, be revealed. Perhaps their world, and everything in it, all the books they read and the people they knew, the life they lived and the environment in which they lived it – all these might be contained in their book. Or perhaps they were masked, hidden from the reader by the reality of the words themselves. Perhaps that other had disappeared in the creation, and only the book remained. Perhaps they had merely been the conduit for some force, the obedient recipient of inspiration. Perhaps, after all, that author was merely a function in some greater process, an inter-working of many threads that went into this work. And it was possible, he realized, that he could not know anything certain about such a writer, even with their book in his hands.

But did that matter? Did he need to know the author to read? Were they sending him a message, or perhaps, messages, that it was his task to decipher? Did the book only say what the author meant it to say? Could he be sure the author knew what they meant in the first place? And might not the book mean something different to him? Who was in control, himself, or this distant other? Was the author constructing a world, fully conscious of its minute details, sculpted precisely to achieve a premeditated purpose, and was he, the reader, constrained by the laws and design of that world? Could he only enter in on the author’s terms? Was the key to the book’s meaning found in the mind of its creator? Or was the book something alive and separate, capable of speaking on its own, without the ghost of an author inhabiting it?

And then there was that troublesome word: meaning. Could he expect to find such a thing in as complex and powerful an entity as a book? There could surely be many meanings – could some be better, truer, than others? Did the book contain any certain, identifiable meaning? Was the quest to discover it even a valid one? For, trembling, he conceived the possibility that in the very search for meaning, he might create what he sought, burying the voice of the book itself.

He might only be reading himself, projected into whatever words were before him. He might not be able to hear any pure, other voice. The quest might string him along, as he continually tried to reach outside himself, to get at what was concealed in these words, that which he sought , which slipped away at the very instant he grasped it in order to secure an understanding, always retreating to the primeval darkness at the edge of his probing thought.

He almost put the book down. The storm of unanswered questions poised threateningly at the small gap where his thumb rested, waiting to be released.

He knew he could not possibly separate the book from its world, from all that went into it or was attached to it. Nor could he possible explore the vastness of that attached context. And he could not avoid bringing his world into the book, either. His encounter with it would surely change it.

But it just might be able to change him in return.

And that, perhaps, was worth launching into that sea of uncertainty. With a pause, and a deep breathe, he opened the book, and began to read.