Reading Many Books In The Midst Of A Storm

As storms raged across the country - and across the world, too - we were in Barbados. I had a moment (ok more) of feeling a bit off that we were heading to this idyllic island while floods and fires flew over the land but still we went. It was a trip planned many months ago. A business trip for my husband that he invited me to tag along.  And so off we went after a cancelled plane reservation through Miami (of course it was cancelled) and a bit of a longer trip through JFK. 

This was truly a mini vacation for my husband, who worked for three out of the six days that we were there yet still felt rested from the time off. And a true vacation for me that offered pinky white sand, warm ocean water (yes, I swam each day...for those that do not know me this is a big deal!), the fresh and daily catch of the day for both lunch and dinner and a seemingly infinite supply of already read and loved and then left behind books in the hotel "library" that I visiting each day. I read a book a day.

I read fast.

I always have. It is a funny way of reading. A taking in of the entire page as my eyes rest on it before starting at the top and reading through. I didn't realize, when I was younger, that I read this way. I thought I was just extremely intuitive since, as I was reading, I was thinking I know this already, have I read this book before? but then I had a conversation with a cousin (once or twice removed and maybe a second cousin, too) who said he does the same thing. A glancing at the page and then a fast reading of the text and so a knowing of the words even as you read them for the first time. 

It makes books go by too fast.

I notice this sometimes, not when the story is really good but when the words are really beautiful. When the story is great I cannot get to it fast enough and so this speed reading that I do is the perfect thing. I want to know "right now" what is going to happen and so want to get through this book "right now", too. But when the words are full and pure and pull together in that way that is just as much poetry and prose, when the images that spring forth are rich in my minds eye and I can taste the sweetness of the dance across the page as though the simple black on white text is actually full of color and texture and beauty, well then I wish I could slow down.

I try to.

When I realize, half way through a page that the beginning needs to be revisiting because I missed the wonder of the words in my haste to find the what of the story, I catch myself and I go back. I read a line again. I sit with the dance of the words across my mind. Maybe I speak them silently, too. And I might, often more than not, reread and reread again a simple phrase that is more art than words.

Though words are art, I know.