The book

I like to read books. I love to read books, but I am not really a constant reader. When I read a book -because I select intentionally that specific book, I do it with a gut feeling, hoping I will get some kind of connection. Superficially you would think that I do it coldly, kinda a military style, but the truth, the truth that nobody knows, is that I trust my gut feeling tremendously.

I don’t always succeed on my selections, I must admit, and some books disappoint me, some bore me, some over surprise me, and their memory last long in my head.

One day, on a time I was reading steadily, I came across a book that seem challenging enough. I was not looking for a challenge whatsoever -and I think that´s what I started with the wrong foot, but either way, I found it so profoundly interesting, that once I got my hands on it, I wasn’t able to let it go. It proved to be quite a challenge, feeling sometimes so connected and sometimes so overpowered by its content.

I still keep this book in my bedroom, a place off-limits for most, my sanctuary, if you will. It stays with me most of all the nights, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, but always there. The matter with this book, or the matter with me, better said -is that I haven´t been so good to dig my hands deeply on it. It has been always so available for me and but somehow I haven’t been able to deeply connect with it. The matter with this book is that some chapters are written on a foreign language, a language as old as love, and I am not all that good on that language, and then I have gotten so frustrated to not be able to understand, that I have close the book and close myself like a clam, like an idiot waiting for… i don’t know what. I fear now that may be nothing wrong with the book, but with me for not being able to see what it was all about. I may be wrong, though.

At some point, after a double or a triple dose, I sleep.

I wake up with pain in my shoulders. The book has been there all night, making me aware of its presence. I stand up. I rub my shoulders and I look at it. My sheets are far from crispy from all the constant tossing and turning, and I am irritated. I stand there, rubbing my shoulders, frowning, thinking. I am pissed off, mostly at myself. Despite the non-expectations approach, and the full honesty I approached with when I found this book, I realize how careless I have been.

The book stands there, completely a mess, some pages are ripped off in anger, some pages have been carefully marked, some pages contain marks made with a pencil on passages specially beautiful, some pages are crumbled in fear. It is all a mess that I am not able to see which page I read last. Lately I have been going furiously back and forth, full of anxiety, fighting with the parts that dind´t make sense to me, trying unknownly to sabotage the ones that did make sense, and now the book is a complete mess.

So am I.

And again I stand there, rubbing my shoulders, frowning, thinking. Focus, I tell myself, and when I focus I see the book is in a new page, and despite the fact I don´t remember which page I was on last, it seems to me that it has found a way to turn itself a page and start a new one.

What now? I ask myself. I have never kept any books at home; when I finish reading them, I bring them to the library. Those books I started reading but I never got a connection, find their way to the library also. Also, I never read a book twice -I never saw the point on it.

I scratch my head. I am tired, really tired. It is all about choices, and decisions are not always easy. I took the book, weight it on my hands: it has gone nearly double with all the constant turning of pages. I place it gently on the nightstand and I dust it softly with my fingerprints. I have no idea what now, but what I know is that I am not ready to bring it to the library,  not yet, nor to put it on a shelf.

I can start by changing the bed linens and get some crispy sheets. White ones better.

.

I would like to say that no books were harm on this story, but unfortunately I can’t. My most deep and sincere apologies…