Have you ever gone into a bookstore and wished you could read every single book? When I was much younger, I embraced that unrealistic and lofty goal. Read every single one of those bound gems. Now I face book after book, their authors shouting at me – Read me; read me please! – their pleas foisted upon me, flung in my face on Facebook, my virtual face time spent having to face the fact that I can never ever come face to face with my life time goal; that is, to hold that last book on earth in my trembling hands, reading the last line before some narcissistic bastard or saucy bitch “finishes” writing the “last line,” the eternal life-changing ending, the elusive eternal flame that I will have missed forever.
Needless to say, which begs the question, why say it at all, it is all a bit overwhelming. Used to be I could just avoid bookstores and avoid this breathtaking dilemma –I could hike into the woods carrying my tattered textbook urging me to avoid alliteration wherever possible, or my slim volume of famous poems, or gasp, a legal pad and pen so that I could sit in the sunshine and contribute to my own personal madness without foisting it upon the innocent.
But no more. Now I must check my email and invariably click on the news, or I must obsessively listen to NPR, or even local AM, or God forbid, check my Goodreads account and face the impossible once again. Oh, how I wish I were trudging through the real Amazon oblivious to the swamp of useless words, which are all virtually needless.
