Lately I have been noticing that it takes me a little longer to focus on things. When I come out of a snooze for instance... or if I have been watching something for far too long... I look away and it takes a few moments to adjust the focus on something else. Not something that anyone would take notice of, but my 15/20 vision has served me very well, and I like to have it to brag about. I was a navy sharpshooter after all.
So yesterday at four in the afternoon I realized that I had been scouring over the same job postings that I had already responded to days ago. Not much happening on the job front out here. Dejected, I turned away from the computer to face my room. I experienced that fuzzy vision thing again and got kind of pissy.
I decided that I would put my eyesight to the test right then and there. The test would be simple. I would gauge my reading speed based on my previous record "A Density of Souls" By Christoper Rice. I read that 274 page novel in about sixteen hours.
Oh, I love to read, but for the last year I have been pretty lazy about it. Picking one or two up here and there and reading for a hundred pages or so, only to be pulled away to something more pressing... and I do seem to be receiving a larger than usual number of visitors lately. Although I cant say that that is unusual at this time of year... What with Pride and the Pink Party happening on the streets beneath my window. My house becomes quite a handy social meeting place. Not that I mind... keeps me from becoming a hermit I suppose.
But I have strayed far from the story at hand.
I have several bookshelves in my house, and many of them are filled with books that I have read, books that people have given me, and books that I have been saving for a rainy day. I wanted something that would provoke thought and was non-fiction. My finger danced across the bookshelf in the sun room from interesting political titles to historically significant events in human history until I landed on the bright red binding of "Manhunt: The twelve day chase for Lincoln's Killer" by James L. Swanson.
At 4:04 yesterday afternoon I settled into the chaise in the bay window, turned the reading lamp on and began to read. There were moments during the evening and into the wee hours of morning when I remember pulling myself from the chaise, book in hand, making my way to the bathroom without hitting anything. Why not; it made perfect sense, if I can do it in the dead of night somewhere between alert and asleep without hitting the furniture, than I should be able to do it in a lit house with my face buried in a book.
I finally went to sleep at 2:00am and it took two sleeping pills to make me put the book down at that point.
"The sun broke free from the horizon and flooded Garrett's farm with light, which shone on Booth's face... No, do not hide him from the light, Booth might have said, if he could still speak. When he was a boy, his bedroom at Bel Air faced east and he told his dearest sister, Asia: "No setting sun view for me, it is too melancholy for me; Let me see him rise.
The stage grew dark. His body shuddered. Then, no more. John Wilkes Booth was dead. The twelve-day chase for Abraham Lincoln's assassin was over."
I slept.
Around nine this morning I began my morning ritual, rousing myself from bed... long enough at least to shut the alarm off two or three times. Until, peeping from beneath the covers now being covered by morning light, I saw that a sufficient amount of dawdling had been observed. I ceremoniously threw the covers back to the foot of the bed, stretched full out, arms at their apex above my head. And began to throw a little tantrum with my feet. First a light pounding back and forth, just to get the bounce of the bed and for the rest of the covers to fall away. Than a more vigorous gallop, finally bending the knees slightly to get the full effect. My back arched as my legs galloped and, as is usually the case, I somehow find myself suddenly standing by the side of the bed. Then very suddenly sitting again on the edge of it.
So I began my day leaving the house around 10:30 to grab a bagel for breakfast on the way to paint a lady friends home. Unemployment can bring the most unexpected people into your life for a brief while. I hadn't neglected to grab the book on my way out the door and, though I didn't think I could, I managed to get both my bagel from one place and my mountain dew from another with my face obscured.
The bus ride took about twenty minutes, and I got to her place just about fifteen minutes early. I found a shaded stoop and sat to read and have my morning meal. For the rest of the day I painted, save twice when I took a brief constitutional on the back porch with a smoke and the book. By four thirty this afternoon, I was walking back to the bus stop eyelashes deep, sprinting through the last breathtaking pages.
At 4:50 this afternoon riding the bus down Cortland Avenue, I closed the back cover, and looked up. A mere twenty four hours and fourty five minutes, had passed since I pulled the tome from the shelf. Thirteen hours spent sleeping and laboring. In the remaining eleven hours I read, from cover to brilliant cover, this 475 page book.
The Conclusion to my test is this. Speed is irrelevant. Reading improves your vocabulary. And that makes you talk and soon enough, start thinking smarter... um... more intelligently. And with that, I leave you to best my record!
Ps. I did cheat just a tiny bit... Of those 475 pages, 52 were bibliography, notes and index, and while I did read a bit of the notes, I skimmed only the titles of the bibliography, and altogether bypassed the index. Making the total number of pages thoroughly read 423, not 475. What is left to say? The great story had ended, I had no need of the rest of that scholarly flim-flamary.
