I slip among the cushions on the couch with a book and the edges of everything else grows blurry. Reality becomes the story on the page. I am no longer here, even as outside things are moist and green, and the lawn mower thrums loudly as T. cuts back and forth across the grass. In the air beyond the feeder with it’s shiny red metal flowers, hummingbirds zigzag, lilt, swoop, defying gravity. I look up intermittently and the clock’s hands make no more sense than reading words in Japanese. Hours slide by. I don’t move. This is what happens when I slip into a book. I have no moderation, no ability to read a page, then leave off. It’s such a crush: this thing I have for words.
Story captures me so entirely it almost becomes a full body experience. I dislocate. My feet grow cold from staying in in one position so long, knees up on the couch by the window as the morning slides towards afternoon.
When I read I become unavailable, altered, distant. T. can ask me a question and I’ll look up moments later having absolutely no idea what he said. I am a story chameleon, becoming blue, or thrilled, or besotted with wanderlust at the story’s slightest suggestion.
I am almost unbearably suggestible when I read. Hardly a skeptic. I go to books to be altered. If the sentences are good, I’m a believer.
I just finished Breath by Tim Winton, and god, I love his stories. Raw, intimate, wild. Read the whole book in one sitting.
What are you like when you read? Also, what’s the most recent book you haven’t been able to put down?