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reading & the library

My current issues with reading are twofold. well, really threefold or maybe even fourfold, but i’ll just get into the two. the twofold issues are fairly recent and i know they will pass. while i haven’t experienced a spell quite like this before, i have gone through other periods of similar illiteracy. for the past two weeks I’ve read one book (the pisces by melissa broder) and have been in the process of reading of two others (the body keeps the score which is about trauma and edinburgh by alexander chee). these books have little in common (well the last two do, as chee’s novel deals with childhood trauma) except for their ability to provoke a visceral discomfort in me while I read them. every twenty pages or so (or every page in edinburgh), i start to feel sick to my stomach and my head will start to hurt and i’ll become so distracted by memories, thoughts, feelings, pains that i have to put the book down. These reactions are most significant with “the body keeps the score,” as it has so much to do with the brain, and includes many diagrams of brains and instances of traumatic events done to the brain that i find myself feeling both physically ill and apart from my body. this is usually after 20 or fewer pages. i would like to say this is where i stop, but i often try to continue, my eyes drifting over large chunks of text, only taking in pieces of information. I may do this for five pages or so before realizing I’m not actually reading but simply letting my eyes roll over the lines while my own thoughts roil in my head and my body churns with discomfort. then i pick up “edinburgh,” and already in this messy state i only get through about five pages before giving this up too. so my current issues with reading seem to be based on the subjects of my reading material (i had a similar problem with reading a new yorker article about havana syndrome), and the solution would just be to stop reading stuff like that but the problem is that i am genuinely interested in the subject of trauma (in part to better understand my behavior and that of my parents and siblings), and i also just like chee’s writing and want to read more of it. but its pretty clear that I’m not ready to deal with trauma, or at least the onus of understanding how trauma works should not be put on me and would be better filtered through a trauma specialist or specifically a neurologist. i do one day want to understand how i work but it seems to be too much for me right now. similarly, with “the pisces” i would be so weighed down by memories and feelings related to past romantic relationships that i would have to put the book down and give my full attention to guilt and self-hatred. now that I’ve reached the end of this paragraph i can hardly remember what the other branch of my illiteracy was (not included the other two, much older prongs), so i’ll just call it here.

I’m in the wellesley library, having just studied a bit for the LSAT and checked out a latin textbook and a novel by henry green, hopeful antidotes to this week’s illiteracy. i love public libraries, mostly for all the strange people who hole themselves in there, myself included. the books are nice, but I’m really here for the screwballs. like the woman with red hair and two beach bag totes quietly talking to herself on a little bench. the middle-aged man reading people magazine with giant bose headphones on while his little son lugged around a giant trumpet case. and of course the series of strange women who work behind the circulation desk, all with weird hair and glasses, and who i feel kind of despise me for some reason. i love them all. then there are always misfits in the periodicals. like the woman last week who bulldozed through a couple weeks worth of boston globes in a single sitting, the elderly folk who read a variety of strange and niche magazines and newspapers (some in foreign languages). basically i feel welcome in this little den of pages and print, chugging alternatively coffee and water and ripping apart a clementine for lunch.

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this idea came to me either in the writing class i take at grub st, trident books on newbury st, or on the way to trident books on newbury st. i had been thinking about my inability to read and write this past week (which id like to say more about later). i handed in nothing for workshop this week, and felt bad about it, while at the some time feeling there was nothing i could have done to prevent my handing in nothing. i tried to write creatively. the prompt was to write a story in the form of a letter, a pretty easy jumping off point. after a few days of avoidance, i started: “Dear X,” i wrote. I liked the indeterminate receiver, that it seemed like a redaction, an omission, that only X would know this letter was to them. I also liked it because it reminded me of Fleur Jaeggy’s story “I am the brother of XX,” and the large capital X felt powerful and mysterious. the actual content of the letter/story i had to write wasn’t blatantly bad but i wasnt interested enough to continue with it. it started to be about a man, in my head this man looked a lot like Samuel Becket, and how he was getting along without his wife or whoever took care of him at home, whether she/they had died, left him, or went out for milk i hadnt decided; he was falling all the time, a mention of falling in the shower was where the story started, and often bumping his head. all this falling and bumping was meant to be indicated also in the style of the letter writer, in abrupt and broken sentences. i couldnt stay with this and ended up stopping. a few days later i started writing to another X, this time an actual ex, and i started to write down everything i wanted to apologize for, and this was a waste of time and a study in pitying myself and generally feeling bad, so i stopped that a few hours after it had been started, but damage was done.

this was all in the days leading up to the class. the class is held on the fifth floor of a very old building on boylston street. the first floor of this building im pretty sure used to be a piano showroom. the windows are large but blacked out; theres a sign about steinways having been moved to a different, unnamed location. the entryway, the steps, and the pillars are all marble. there is an old sign that displays the names of the businesses that used to occupy the building: some of the letters have fallen away or dangle by their pegs, so beneath the dusty glass the words look like ancient epigraphs. ive only been able to register this sign board but ive never had the chance to look to long at it. i dont want to be caught staring at it or reading it and be asked what im doing by any of the adult-people who work in the building, so i never linger. though i worry about being “caught,” there is never anyone around; usually when i enter the foyer it is empty and dark. today, i saw that they were renovating the first floor, repainting the walls or something so it was sealed off and large swaths of painter’s canvas were spread over the hardwood floors.

the elevator in the foyer/lobby is old and unreliable and it scares me. today i wasnt able to ride it because whenever i hit the button for the fifth floor, a bell would chime and the doors would shutter in their frame and retreat back. after hitting the door closed button a few times i decided to get out. i always have to duck my head when im getting in or out of elevators. im afraid some large sliding monolith will fall through the crack between the elevator and the floor and kill me. ducking doesnt really do anything. if anything i look like im sticking my head in a guillotine. but it gets me over the threshold.

i take the stairs. there is renovation being done on the third floor as well. the stairwell is dusty and smells like chemicals. i get worried. when i get to the third floor and see the work being done: more painter’s canvas, with fans whirring and windows open letting in fresh, clean air. i dont linger. im able to climb the stairs to the fifth floor and calm myself. i dont mean to make it seem like im a worried or nervous person; i dont think i really am; im just that way a lot.

the point of all this is to talk about the class, which is led by a writer named Kit and attened by nice middle-aged and old people and myself. i wont get into everyone in the room, but just imagine theyre all there. i dont know why i keep going and i dont know why kit keeps teaching. some of the people are quite old and not always fully keyed into whats going on. im hardly one to judge people on their ability to be present, since i was actively somewhere else for the last hour of the class, a movement away from my body provoked by a story by an old english-born, boston-living, irishman named michael about a man who was molested by a priest when he was young, who has had to deal with a lifetime of guilt and anger. michael said he didnt know where this story came from. but i dont think that was true. either way i was remarkably distant afterwards. my thoughts were tangled up in other things, my hands were shaking, my arms and shoulders and neck felt hot and prickly, and my brain was burning.

i think this might have been when this idea came to me. it was more of an image than an idea. i saw large chunks of text on a webpage. and frankly this is all i want out of writing these days. i want large, dense paragraphs of black text. i dont want to care anymore about how good it is. i just want it out of me and down somewhere in black serif font. so this is what im doing.

after class, my body and brain still buzzing, i walked the long blocks of the back bay to trident books where i thought about this more, the text, the large amounts of it. i was hardly able to read any of the books i picked up. my eyes skid over the print and i could only pick up stray words and would have to imagine what the sentence probably was, then i would put the book back. i have this problem with reading, other than the current problem of not reading, that is more like a lexical dysfunction or something that i’d like to say more about later. having these problems with reading and writing and books in general, i decided that though i like these things very much, i am not a writer. i miss so much when i read. and write so slowly and poorly, that i cant vest myself in these as part of myself. im moving these to the outskirts for now, but they are still dear.

all this writing is about the black print. today is about the black print, the text, huge mounds of it.