READING AGAINST THE CLOCK


Oh you have had your chance, It said;
Left it alone and it was one.
Who said a watched clock never moves?
Look at it now. Your chance was I.
   He turned and saw the accusing clock
   Race like a torrent round a rock.’

                                        Slow Starter Louis McNeice




I have a couch, set beside the window, on this I lay and I read, sometimes listening to music, sometimes in silence. I am though a slow reader, constantly cogitating, pausing for thought as ideas in the text mingle with my own; sometimes just pausing to allow my mind to catch up with the words on the page.



 I am also a passionate reader, though not in truth a voracious one. I am too restless, too engaged with the world and of course my own writing. This depresses me.

It is, I think, a mistake for an avid and passionate reader to be a bibliophile; better to stand back and admire the shelves, the aesthetic of rows of ordered volumes, abandoning all hope of being able to read, let alone absorb them all. It is a mistake for a passionate reader such as my self to buy so many books that he longs to read, for as the days pass they stand silent accusers of my fickle restlessness and my promiscuous reading habits. The morning drifts by as I read the comment pages of the Guardian online, drink endless cups of tea and fidget with a short piece I am writing. The book sits unopened upon the coffee table.

When I finally lie down to read and the words begin to pull me in, ever deeper, until that moment when the dancer and dance, reader and text merge and the strange whispering magic is given life. If I pause in just such a moment and glance up at the shelves I know that time is running out. There is now too much gold to prospect. I am reading against the clock.





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