I have lost the ability, patience, attention or something to read books recently, which means I am bored and isolated much of the time. I have a number of books in a kind of master in-pile, waiting to be read, and I have a number of books ''to acquire'' listed somewhere upstairs, but the prospects of actually acquiring and reading them are becoming more and more unlikely. I even have a few books awaiting dispatch to an old reader, now many months overdue; I hope he will forgive my negligence. I have tried to read in many different ways, at different times, even literature I wouldn't otherwise bother with (such as a John Adams essay on Canon and Feudal law), but the words go in and then go out, and there is no memory, and boredom, much like the the apathy I mentioned before, just sets in. And the trouble is I feel like I am running out of time. I have felt like this for many months already, and May will turn into September in a few seconds, and September into a new year, and that will turn into 2073 in no time at all. As Basil Fawlty adequately put: ''Zhooooom, what was that? That was your life, mate! Oh...do I get another? Sorry, mate, that's your lot.'' It's almost as if I am standing at the top of a cliff watching at a safe enough distance the onset of a ruinous storm, all in slow motion, and it comes nearer and now nearer until inevitably I am swept away. Do I conceive of finding some safe place in which to hide? Of course not; what would be the point?
This is an affliction brought upon men by this world. Spite can keep you going when hope is gone.
ReplyDeleteStay away from the slave food and lift heavy things. Some level of detachment is necessary. We just don't know when, or even if the moment will come, but if it comes, I want to be ready.
Are you referring to Doomsday? As a thief in the night it will come.
DeleteI'm thinking more along the lines of seeing and end to the rule of those who took my natural position away from me. I would like to be productive, raise a family, build something- but there is a certain kind of joy in smashing things, especially if those things happen to be part of the regime that kept me from a productive life in the first place.
ReplyDeleteEh. I go through periods where any kind of serious reading becomes impossible. Look for some other form of diversion. Or try some light reading, purely for entertainment. I am partial to good novels of the historical fiction genre. They appeal to the reactionary in me.
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