August 21, 2005

The Sleeping Bag of Myself

So in between working, prepping for the SAT classes I'm teaching soon, and sleeping, I've been doing a lot of reading lately. That's what happens when I don't have a TV... I have to find some other form of entertainment, and reading is a long-loved pastime I haven't done enough of lately. I devoured all the Harry Potter series as audio books (so I still don't know how that chick's name is spelled, cuz I haven't seen it)... and I really enjoyed them, as well as enjoying the ability to "read" and do other things at the same time, as long as those other things didn't require thought... like laundry or crocheting. I've also been doing actual reading, too (as opposed to listening). And it's been great, I've been devouring lots of stuff... some beautiful, some just bizarre, some a little of both... but whereas watching too much TV made me stupid, all this reading is causing me to internalize a lot.


Right now, for instance, I'm reading Blue Like Jazz and although some of it is just so-so, some of it is amazing. So I have all these beautiful little stories in my head, and then I don't know what to do with them, other than go through life absorbed in the beauty of these little stories. I'm way too much in myself and not in the world, I guess. It reminds me of a phrase from a book I read earlier this summer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, where Oskar talks about "zipping up the sleeping bag of myself" ... or something like that. I thought that was a beautiful phrase, and I guess that's kind of what this is like. I'm probably not making any sense, but that probably goes along with the rest of it, too.

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