I don’t know if I’m lazy to excess, although I wouldn’t call him laziness exactly how I feel when I have to pack my bags, hail a taxi, and abandon my morning routine to go to the airport and board a plane. Actually, it’s hard for me to stop reading what I’m at that moment reading. I usually tell myself that this is not the problem and that I can still take the book with me and continue reading it during the flight, but it happens that this reading leads me to another and that to another and there become so many that suddenly I have ten on the table and I am writing on the margins; or, simply, I underline, consult or reread paragraphs already underlined or to be underlined. I realize that, if it’s about being practical, I shouldn’t take that pile of books with me; Besides, I can’t carry them all and the airline would charge the excess weight of the luggage, so I have no choice but to reassess the matter and I end up choosing one or two little books and the rest are waiting for my return. This is what happens every time I have to go on a trip.
Last weekend I had to go to Mexico City and I was reading The Book of Disquiet, by Fernando Pessoa, somewhat fearful that his manifest pessimism would infect me, so the only way to read it was by having him accompany it with some poems from the first volume of Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry, but I couldn’t take either of them with me: both copies are hardcovers and over five hundred pages each.
Before leaving the house, I took Luz por todos partes, by Cees Nooteboom, who, by the way, we will read in the poetic reading and creation workshop that I coordinate at the Center for Literature (Celit) of the Sinaloan Institute of Culture. I leave the email in case someone likes to sign up: [email protected]
#sloth #test