Fundamental Reading

I just want to read.
I just want to read.
I just want to read.
I just want to read.

The current mantra that I’ve been chanting lately is I just want to read. Sometimes this mantra replaces the verb with paint, or stitch, or lay in the sun, or bake, or write… but lately all I have wanted to do… is read. This feels in direct contrast with my long to do list that lengthens instead of shortens on the days where I wrangle it out of my anxiety debris and into material form. Maybe it’s because the weather is cooler now, we’ve lost hours of sunlight, and my studio is cold because our floor heat isn’t working downstairs. I’m too lazy (scared?) to call Tom or was it Dean, or some other one syllable name back out to take a look at the boiler? The small one that makes way too much noise for my comfort based on the few times we got it fired up last winter. I have nothing beyond intuition but the rumble makes me believe it will need to be replaced, and I cannot face that. I just want to read.

Indicative of many facets of rural life, our furnace repair man does not have a website. We only know of him and consequently who to call for help from the scrap of paper taped near the furnaces courtesy of the former owners of our home. Indicative of the realities of my rural life he rolled onto our property with a repair truck sporting a bumper sticker for a certain former president proudly announcing his political agreement. Meanwhile, all through last year’s election cycle Vaimo and I went back and forth about putting the other candidate’s lawn sign out near the end of our drive, near our business name’s sign, and across from our bullet hole riddled mailbox. We opted to keep it inside instead, in the laundry room, and made sure to shut the door when Mark or Ken or (I really wish I could remember his name) stopped by twice last year to the tune of another thousand dollar home repair.

I just want to read. Snuggled in the blanket on the couch, spending my time with someone else’s imagination instead of my own. Or someone else’s accomplishment of their hard work wrestling words into the form of a book they birthed into the world while mine grows older and more disoriented in the digital clouds. I grew up in the dawn of the BOOK IT era, where I was actually rewarded with pizza for meeting reading goals that were not a challenge for me to meet. When I found my way back to reading as a significant part of my life a few years ago I started walking around our home with a book open in my hand and my nose in it while I waited for the coffee pot to brew the morning elixir, or for the air fryer to finish its cycle of electric warming of meals. When I realized I was doing this again, I remembered how I used to do that when I was shorter and younger. It was like a homecoming, having finally healed from the stress of graduate school that estranged me from reading for pleasure and instead replaced reading with duty, chore, expectation, and stress. Now I find myself walking with books, driving with a book in the car in case I end up having down time somewhere and I can read a few pages, choosing purses by their ability to accommodate a book, or moving my current reads from the couch to the bed to my favorite reading chair. I'm rarely beyond reach of a book these days. Now I leave one down in my studio that’s art related and I cherish reading one essay or chapter or section from it when I’m in my studio as the others wait upstairs for me to return.

I just want to read is maybe an escape. A prayer? A call to action? Something I need right now as if I can’t get enough. Some days I grieve that there is no way for me to read all the books I want to get to in my lifetime. Or I bemoan that I haven’t read some things considered fundamental by my personal rubric or based on an aside from another writer or scholar as a suggestion to read in relation to some current idea (obsession) I’m tracing. My scholar sensibilities send me too deep into the constellation of connections where a hint of another writer’s work in someone else's book has me inter-library loan requesting the footnoted reference or in-text aside. I carry lists of books I just want to read in my phone, as bookmarks on Instagram, on my Goodreads, in special notebooks with lists gathered by subject matter. I browse books to read like it is my job.

And maybe that’s the crutch. Reading is not my job. But wouldn’t it be great to have a living wage and your only job duty was to read what you wanted to like your job depended on it? Maybe instead, my reading practice is my unpaid internship for a boss who looks and sounds a lot like me. It is an activity besides painting and walking that helps me feel less guilty about not doing something else. Not foolproof, but probably as good as it will get for me. And yet the mantra lately I just want to read confuses because it almost sounds as if I’m not reading. When in actuality I read every single day. This week I hit my 100 book goal I set out to achieve in 2021 and a whole month ahead of schedule. When I first started setting these goals (while theoretically working a job that had reading as a component of the work and not actually having much time/energy for it) I would be cramming so many books at the end of the year to meet it. Now, I’m four weeks ahead of schedule and still feeling like 100 has not satisfied my annual reading cravings especially given the three books I currently have in progress. I’m wondering how many books I will exceed my intended goal by the end of this year and if that craving for more will ever be sated.

My reliance on “just” as if to read is not noble, or maybe I wrongly presume it too noble, strikes me as the knot in this phrase holding my mantra together. It reads as a message of urgency like every book I don’t finish is one more against the finite number I will get to in my lifetime. “I want to read” alone, without the modifier is too bold a proclamation to my workforce of one. As if I have no room to say yes to it, and no to other things calling to my attention. “I want to read” marks a clear, direct desire and yet also reminds me that wanting to is not the same as actually doing. And why do I keep imagining that distance between desire and action as a gulf instead of its actual reality—the thinnest line of separation? I just want to read. To hold something of weight in my hands. To feel the turn of a page as a meditative offering to something that can hold the gambit of what I feel inside. My urges to seek comfort and calm and ease. My desires for a slower pace. My needs for connection to the outside world through an internal process of making sense of signs printed in ink on paper born of trees. I just want to read.

What I’m Reading

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

It’s not everyday I feel like hugging a book after I finish it, but this one gave me that desire to do so. The reader is thrust into a world where humans have mostly figured out how to be in better relationship to one another and the planet. A sci-fi book in the spirit of optimism for our collective future, I don’t want to share too much of the plot in fear of spoiling it. Let me just share that it felt like exactly what I needed to read about being in this world, and challenging my constant (incessant?) feelings like if I am not “productive” I’m failing. A guide for how to just be, and/or a model for a future I wish we were actually living. Great fiction.

Artist Offerings

• An artist who deeply reads feminist Monique Wittig and then paints in wool about it wow thanks for blowing my mind Wilder Alison
• If you’re looking to expand your book list for this year check out NPR’s annual round up
• Speaking of books - have one you really liked and you want to see if there are others up your alley? I just learned about this cool tool: What Should I Read Next? Especially good for those who don’t act like putting a to-read list together is their job! 

Creative Ritual

Is it too much to admit I’ve been reading a lot? I took a whole week off from work for my birthday and then hosted my hermanitas for the fall holiday break this last week. Well… almost a whole week off. During my Montana retreat I submitted an essay for publication and did a conference presentation but pretty good for me. Almost five days of no work in a row. New record? Needless to say I’ve been resting! And spending time with my faves. And it’s been great! So not much to repot on the creative work to-do list. I did manage to transport a couple of paintings from my Interior Intimacy series to the Kaddatz Galleries in Fergus Falls, MN so if you’re local, go check them out! Not local? You can take a virtual tour. Hang a left after clicking into the front door of the building to see the work me and some members of my LRAC Cohort have up! Yay us!

Questions to Ponder

What are you reading that makes you feel something?
What is the current mantra you’re repeating for this part of 2021?
How far is the distance between desire and action for you right now?

Thanks for journeying with me. I hope, as always, that you take what you need and leave the rest for someone else, or for another time. 

-KCF

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