Blog no.15 - Turn that page

Dear hopefully non-psychopaths,

  Taking into consideration the fact that right now you're reading this, which is a fair hypothesis to make assuming the circumstances, I can see that you're fixated on your computer screen, wondering where I'm getting at and lingering between being casually interested if even briefly disconnected from the outside world, and being all the more intrigued in what's about to follow, completely and utterly unaware of your surroundings. That's the beauty of reading, you see, and the reason we've evolved past to being talking apes. 

  Now what happens if you stumble upon something genuinely good? Something mysterious, something entrancing? I'm telling you, that feeling is in a league of its own. Buying a new book, touching its cover for the first time, opening the first few pages and feeling each small lump of the paper on your fingertips, smelling the fresh scent of your newly acquired companion, all these seemingly small things are parts of a multi-hour trip to the end of the author's world and back. "Brace thyself he who enters, for tears shall be shed and emotions shall be triggered." 

  You jump into your bed and quickly assume reading position: belly facing downwards, elbows on the mattress feet kicked up high and intertwined, head straight forward leaning in the open book, hands delicately handling both sides of it's colourful cover, fingers edging the yellow-ish pages ready to turn at any moment now. And you start your beautiful journey. At first you're getting annoyed easily, by the fly that can't find the fucking window, the car that keeps screeching as if it hasn't been oiled since the middle-ages, the neighbour's dog who won't shut the fuck up, but as you're getting further and further into the book all these noises start to fade; in fact you can't even hear them after a while. Did they stop? Fuck no, the goddamn dog seems to be in a personal vendetta with every single eardrum in the building. You, however, are safe from all this racket since you have abandoned all the senses not responsible to making your brain decipher these markings on the paper and correlate them with images you can connect in order to create the characters, the story, the world that the author meant to pass on to you. 

  Turning the pages hastily, absorbing every single piece of information presented unto you, imagining the appearance of your new-found friends and enemies, you lose every sense of time and space, so much so that the only time that is relevant for you is the fictional one, and your posture has gone to shit since you first started reading. 

  Your upper body is turned sideways, half-hanging out of the bed, your right leg is bent in the most uncomfortable angle possible and your left leg is swinging at a stable frequency, hitting the foot of the bed on each oscillation. Unfazed, you continue reading as if you're lying on a comfortable mattress with puffy pillows and silk sheets. 

  Unknowingly and unconsciously you are smiling, occasionally cracking up. By the end of the novel your heart starts beating faster and faster, and as you turn that last page it almost stops; at least it feels like it. You read the last sentence, the last word, the last letter and the last point of the book. Turning the page you realize that there is no more, the journey has come to an end. As you're closing the book from it's rear end, you feel the back cover for one last time before letting it slide from your hands, hopefully landing on the bed. 

  You stop for a second to reflect on the story you were just part of, to figure out your emotions. Eventually you start noticing the details around your room. The sun has set but it's August so you figure you don't give a shit. You get up and in one swift motion you grab the newspaper from your desk and smack the fly against the window, relieving the poor blind, deaf and possibly mentally unstable bastard of his misery. At least the car has stopped, it's parts probably committing mass suicide over the fact that there was more grease on their owner's hair than on them. Oh, and the dog is still singing its now weaker and forever monotone "I'll shit on your ears" piece, in Fuck You minor. 

  There's a feeling of emptiness in your heart, a feeling of closure, like saying goodbye to an old friend. You close your eyes and let uncle Morpheus take you in his sweet embrace, slipping further and further into a world inhabited by your thoughts and your thoughts only, now embellished by the wonderful adventure you experienced a few blinks ago. That happens every time you pick up a new book from the shelf, one waiting to be read, to be experienced. And every single time it ends, by the time the sun has set once again and you close your eyes, dreams start becoming reality, reality starts becoming fiction, and you are now the author of your next great adventure, hopeful that one day it will lead to the one that will help you realize what your worth is in this world. And that dog still won't shut the fuck up. 

Happy international books day!

Kind regards,

Stelios Zesiades.

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one."

- George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons