When I am reading

June 14th

When I am reading, I am calm and harmless and quiet and easy. My mind might drift as I scan the words in the sentences on the page after page, but it always catches a word or a sentence on the page that means something more than just a jumble of graphic signs that we (in that particular culture and speaking that specific language) assigned meaning to as a way of conveying sounds and thoughts to posteriority. Something that makes me raise my head and look at something ahead as I savor and compartment in my head what I just read. When I read, I don’t plan anything concerning me or my future. I don’t plan anything evil or destructive as well while reading — that usually comes later after I am in bed trying to remember something I read before. A swirl of thoughts in my head is usually very pronounced but short-lived. Then I repeat the process of reading or staying sane as I want to call it, the next day. And I know that my routine will not change even a day after, a week after, or a year after. That is something of rock-solid knowledge that makes me steady in my everyday life. But recently I noticed that I am lifting my head from what I am reading more frequently and I am doing that based not on what I read but for no reason at all. And even when I am reading, the flow of my scanning of the page is different and easily it becomes an automatic function and just a movement of eyes without registering what is in front of me. That is curious and I feel curiously strange.