After that long run last Saturday I decided to stay at home and take
it easy the rest of the weekend. Taking it easy meant binge-watching shows on
Netflix. I went over my to-watch list and chose Haider, a 2014 Indian movie that is supposed to be an adaptation of
Hamlet. After 20 minutes of watching
the film I felt distracted. I was unmoved by what’s happening on screen. I went
back to my list—Pandemic, The 43, Atlantics, Virunga, The Game Changers—but nothing appealed to me. Is it
me or are those shows really that boring? Is my mind too jittery that I cannot
fully concentrate on what I’m watching? I gave up and started reading instead.
Before I knew it, hours had passed and I’ve reached the last page of Esme
Weijun Wang’s compilation of essays, The
Collected Schizophrenias. So I began another book: American Dirt, today’s most talked about
novel that almost everyone hates.
I am now 42
years, with no responsibilities and nothing else to distract me from my life of
solitude, and I’ve retained the deeply engaged, obsessive reading of my
childhood, those long, trancelike reading bouts that are more satisfying than
watching movies of mindlessly scrolling through social media. With books I am
transported; I am immersed, body and soul.
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