It’s hard to write, if you’re not reading. A very simple fact.
The last book I read was Pamuk’s Snow. It took a lot of effort, and resilience to finish it. I’m not sure why, at any other time I would’ve devoured it in a day. The story is beautifully written, and the scenery is breathtaking. Nonetheless, it took me 43 days, to be exact, to finish it.
I’ve never been this far away from the written word.
I miss the thick yellow pages of our Library. My father had a passion for the old novels printed in the 1930s-1960, when paper still had a texture, when every book had a distinct smell. He passed that down to me.
I spent hours on end flipping and reading Churchill’s war memoirs. I loved the smell it left on my fingers after I put it back on the shelf.
It was Jubran that put my little heart’s ache into words. I was 10, and she sat behind me in class, the most beautiful girl that ever wore that brown uniform.
I loved reading them times and times again. It was all too easy for me to start over from the beginning and go through the story as if it was the very first time. I might have read Farewell to Arms more than twenty times, yet it never failed to shake me all over again.
I can’t help thinking of all these characters, not characters, but people. All these people that I’ve come to meet, and care for. It’s disturbing to think they’re all nothing but a product of one’s mind, just like Sophie in Sophie’s World.
The words of these novels feel so far away now, but that distinct smell of age lingers on. It reminds me how tired I am of, and how terrible I am at this passive game of waiting.
On Olives and Sake
With Sake, nothing tastes better than Olives. But you would have to be a Levantine living in Japan to know that.
July 12th, 2008 at 8:06 am
Yazan,
I like your words, especially when they are very personal… Keep them coming.
I don’t know, I think it’s something in the air because I have similar feelings going on. Like you, I am tired as well.
July 12th, 2008 at 8:55 am
tired! such an understatement.
could it be the heat? the long days trudging along. the absence of laughter, the burden of futility…
i\’m going through it all, again. i haven\’t read a book in over a month. even writing in its simplest form is taking its toll…
october is not that far off, at least for me, there\’s the promise of moving on.
July 12th, 2008 at 9:39 am
“there is no friend as loyal as a book” – our dear friend Hemingway
July 14th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
Yazan my friend, I feel for you! I haven’t read in a long, long while (RPG games don’t count).
In fact I got a good stack of books lined up waiting to be read. One of them is Children of Hurin which I really want to read. Another I started reading but I always am tired that I fall asleep on the book. I forgot the story by the time I was half way through it.
What happened to the world
July 17th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
and that intoxicating post of yours.