i'm reading something

now, the last thing i told you i was reading, didn't get very far.  and you may remember that i said i'd been having trouble lately, which actually stretches for years now.  i read almost constantly on the internet, and i've read a bunch of books on judaism, but particularly with fiction i just can't do it.  even listening to audio books has been difficult.  i'm current on all the mystery series i was reading, but that's like tv.  anything else, not so much.

i just want the idea, i don't want the blah blah blah.

maybe now is as good a time as any to tell you that i am the world's slowest reader, probably.  this upset my mother.  she wanted to send me to speed reading classes.  normally i probably would have done it;  it would have helped in college to have time to read everything.  if it had been anything else, probably yes i would have done it, but i got an orientation for speed reading and i could tell right away that it would break something for me.  that was in ninth grade;  it was first semester and reagan was running against carter.  and i knew that i read for style.  i mean not entirely for style, content too.  i just knew that it would rob me of something vitally important and that i wouldn't be able to just turn it off and on.

i want to go to classes to learn to read slower, i said defiantly, and i held that ground.


i bought this book, for the name, pretty much.  i had decided i wanted to read this guy, not knowing much about him.  and then in an interview or something, he said two things that made me, in a completely non-sexual way [i know because i spent some time pondering it] give him an enormous kiss on the lips.

what he said was this:

1. you can break the rules, if you can pull it off
2. whatever really scares you, THAT's what you should be doing

now, i learned the first thing in art school, but i needed to hear it again.  the second thing i really knew, but i really needed to hear it again.

so i'm reading his book.  i'm 90 pages in.  but i was several pages in before i stopped.  how could i have read this far and not noticed?  the page contained some amount of writing, then it stopped and just moved on to the next page.

it was so much like something i would have done i just didn't notice it at first.