There's an interesting essay in Swink.
From the piece...
Hold a book in front of you, a little to one side. Focus on the sentences but also use your peripheral vision. Mark your place with a thumb as you sample what’s ahead: the sidewalk continues for 200 feet; that biker will glide around you; long before that dogwalker approaches, veer from her oversized Akita. Such sights don’t interfere with steady, immersive reading. There’s no annoying entanglement of thought and text. Look up, store an image, and walk through it as you read. Instead of walking solely in the real world, inhabit a fictional world you imaginatively co-create with the book that’s in your hand.
Whenever I admit that I like to walk and read, without fail someone will respond: “I couldn’t do that, I’m not coordinated enough.” Or: “I’m afraid I’d get hit by a bus.” It’s always a bus. Are buses the smusher of choice because they’re the largest moving things on city streets? Does size matter because it best exaggerates the hypothetical smush? Or is it possible that the “hit-by-bus” response suggests that the community at large will punish the walking reader for turning what is solitary and sedentary into something active and public?
“Still, dude, you’re gonna get hit by a bus.”
“No, I don’t think so. I’m never in danger. In fact, I’m saving the world.”
Bruno Schulz started it.
No comments:
Post a Comment