This strife with oneself. There seems to be an ocean to be read, and then one's span, or scoop size, a page at a time. When one reads slowly, wanderingly, digressingly, taking off at every suitable departure point for a tangent, one often lands in these conversations with self. About how and what to read. The aspirations are very high, but at the same time, one reads slowly, perhaps a few pages a day.
One would think that even at that pace, one could read a lot as long as there is discipline. Should the discipline be allowed into the digressions too? I think not. Then perhaps a better question is what is the objective? Is it the number of books or pages or is it the quality of thoughts during the reading time, or where a page of written words can take you? And the funny thing is there is no good way to measure that. Except perhaps a sense of contentment that a few pages are enough. The mind's chasing of numbers, this other conversation about non measurable contentment - it is like holding your own on the beach at the edge of waves coming in and going out, slowly the ground seems to shift, your feet sink and you know not the ground that you stand on. Then you keep reminding yourself of the objective often. That is, shifting your feet in the sand again and again to find firm footing. Reminding yourself again of the bit about contentment. The objective is perhaps that hour or two with words is beautiful, is full of tangents perhaps or a nice story or a deep thought that opens something inside you. This random measure of pages read or books covered, a lifetime is small perhaps to what one would like to read, especially at the slow pace. And not because of that, but because what you read for - sometimes a paragraph is enough, sometimes a page is good. And contentment helps. Else it is a random conversation with self. And you carry on some endless pursuit chasing pages. Perhaps not to read if you see a FOMO creeping up.
My thoughts at the moment after a particularly random conversation with self. Let's see if this is solid ground or shifting sands. Check on these again sometime soon. And to reflect on the non-measure of a slow reader.
**
When I was younger, the Literature text books were a curated thing, a few essays, short stories, extracts, poems. One was to read everything deeply, over and over again, getting familiar with the text. Then one grows up, and encounters this ocean alone. As in, the whole world and all its books are there. How do you pick? Classics perhaps is one good place to begin. Book Lists. Nobel prize winners. Guidance from other readers perhaps who have read a lot. And then sometimes one likes an author, and tries to read as much from them. The list keeps getting longer. What I perhaps mean to say that the way one read for school, over and over again until the meanings surrender, as they say, it changes as one grows up and reads for pleasure. Still, there are some writings that are like that. That require me to pause, and read again and again, trying to imprint it on my mind, perhaps noting it down on paper, perhaps just reading it again, and yet again. One doesn't move much forward that way, but one reaches a satiety or contentment which somehow chasing numbers doesn't get one.
Perhaps this truce with oneself, that slow reading is perhaps the way to be. That it matters not that there is the ocean out there. A few pearls that find their way to your reading time are plenty.
It is a learning. A slow process. Something to imbibe. Because time and again I find myself in this conversation with self, about the slowness of my reading and the vastness of the aspiration.
**
Then this essay found its way to me. 'On reading to oneself' from the Habitations of the word by William H Gass. It can be found here (pg 216). This one is one of those which require rereading often, in the hope that some of it would imprint on the mind.
A sentence that I carry with me - ' to be a paragon of appreciation'. The larger paragraph in which it appears is here below:
But the educated and careful tongue will taste and discriminate this particular stew from every other. Tasting is a dialectical process in which one proceeds from general to specific similarities, but this can be accomplished only through a series of differentiations. Antonymical tasting (which also sounds disgusting) ultimately "identified: this dish, not only as pure stew, but as Brunswick strw, and knows whether it was done in Creole style or not, and then finally it recognizes, in this plater's present version of the recipe, that the squirrels were fat and gray and came from Mississippi where they fed on elderberries and acorns of the swamp oak. One grasps an act, an object, an idea, a sentence, synthetically, simply by feeling or receiving its full effect - in the case of the stew that means its complete, unique taste. I need not be able to name the ingredients; I need not be able to describe how the dish was prepared; but I should be a paragon of appreciation. This quality, because it is the experience of differentiation within a context of comparison, cannot be captured in concepts, cannot be expressed in words. Analytical tasting has a different aim. It desires to discover what went into the dish; it reconstructs the recipe, and recreates the method of its preparation. It moves from effects to causes.