Untitled

I can liken 95% of my romantic relationships to reading a book. Reading a book is all consumption, pleasure. You aren’t particularly concerned with the content of what you’re reading, but rather, with the emotions that it is evoking. You open a book because the title is interesting, intriguing. And as you skim the first few chapters, not predominantly concerned with the words you see if it holds enticing language or thought, but more so if you can find something that really grabs you. Something small, a quirk about the author’s writing that you find endearing. And once it grabs you, you no longer care about what specifically you’re reading, your chief concern is completion. The conclusion of the book is now a goal to achieve, and when finished the pleasure is overwhelming. What a sense of accomplishment, of growth at the completion of a novel. But however overwhelming the triumph, there is also a proportionate sense of dissatisfaction. There should be more. It should continue. It should have left your belly feeling like you’ve eaten a prime steak, not a microwavable mac ‘n cheese bowel. You shared a deep personal connection with that book at one point in time, but now it’s over. And the feeling of loss and bittersweet finale is replaced with a proverbial sigh of relief. Of course you mourn the end of a wonderful literary jeuissance but let us be frank; just because you closed the book doesn’t mean your life will be heading to a screeching halt.
It’s because of the ease, the accessibility to books. They’re definitive, quantifiable. I want to read a book that doesn’t leave me feeling like that. I want the prime steak. How do you put words to an experience that is all sensation? The book I want to read will be intimidating, with a heavy, hard-covered casing that is elegantly bound over pages and pages of handwritten script in a language I don’t know how to read. You’re not supposed to read them. You fall into the pages and let the sensations pull you through the book. It’s like needing glasses your whole life only not knowing it. Then suddenly having them, wearing them, and seeing the world, experiencing sensations in a whole new clarity.