Thursday, September 9, 2010

Reading and writing



  Everybody has their own reason to read.
If my earlier years were spent with reading to simply indulge myself in something other than the world around me, now I choose to read each book for some reason, goal or purpose. While in the past I read to spend time, now the time spent in reading seems to go by so fast I wish I had another head - or at least pair of eyes - to read right next to me. Some people are such fast readers that they are capable of reading 10 to 20 books a month. Yet I have still been hovering over 5 to 10 books for the past 3 months. I am a slow reader and a slow thinker mostly because I like to go deep and far into my thoughts.
  To me, reading is like diving into a sea of thoughts. If the water is cold or unfamiliar, it takes some time to get used to the scape and temperature. If I like the sight I go deeper and deeper and deeper. It's interesting how the deeper you go into your thoughts, time tends to go by quicker than you feel. How amazing time and thought are bound together by the bindings of a book. This tight and intimate feeling between my eyes glued to the book, streaming thoughts and flowing time is probably what brings me to keep on reading.

  Writing has never been easy for me.
Nobody gave me enough time to understand the actual process. It was as if I were given no thread and had been told to weave in seconds. Homework and TOEFL essay writing was always done in a hurry and usually failed to complete. It maybe more difficult because I try to keep writing as something of the past. Good memories of when I used to win prizes for the storybook making contest in 2nd grade haunt me. Not until last semester had I felt again how good it is to spin a web of words like a spider. Lead threads spurt out images tangled up in my head.
 If I were to choose one word to express the exact opposite of myself it would be 'simple-minded'. Sometimes it gets so complicated that I have no idea of what I am thinking about. There is always two or three thoughts going on inside my head like an unfinished software process. Doodling used to help me organize them, visualize my thoughts and emotions. They were often in the form of images, words than sentences so I am used to drawing out my thoughts than writing. Sometimes I feel my writing tends to jump between the lines, lack full description. I speak that way as well, when I am in a rush, I assume people will know how I think and how I feel. So maybe the most difficult challenge in writing for me would be to learn how to explain and help others understand.

  

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