Wednesday, March 31, 2010

the very creative name of my very first post

I don't underline, and I don't write in the margins anymore.  When bound by the rigors of academia I took comfort in the copious notes and gallons of ink poured onto the pages of my philosophic texts.  Now, since my reading is purely recreational, I simply bend back a page, almost without thinking, as the full meaning of a line of text tickles the back of my mind and recedes into my subconscious while my eyes continue their passage from left to right, top to bottom.
I don't know exactly when I started doing this, or why.  I could tell you that the permanence of ink on paper seemed to indicate a rigidity of thought that I would otherwise like to avoid, and it may actually be true, but it's just as likely that finding a seat on the subway so that I could write became too much of a hassle.  
I do remember that at one point I decided it would be a good idea to revisit all my dog-eared pages and compile them into some sort of record of the things that once caught my eye.  But after my second pass through The Fountainhead yielded no tangible results I decided that a more structured approach would perhaps benefit the project.  So now, when I mark a page with my passing interest it serves as a challenge, not only to return to the text, but to try to remember the line that mandated the crease, everything that came before it that imbued it with all of that meaning, and all the meaning it then added to the pages to come.
This is my attempt to rise to that challenge.