I don’t have the most meticulously well crafted schedule this term. Classes in the late morning, then nothing, then classes in the evening. It’s about a 20 or 30 minute walk from my house to campus, so it’s hardly worth coming back home for. Today, in my 3 hour break, I reposed on the grass in the sun and surprised myself by polishing off a book.
Finishing a book in the daylight is an odd experience. Much like how one is always surprised upon leaving a movie theater to see that the day hasn’t yet died (this is a phenomenon confined to summer, I think), I was puzzled that my day hadn’t ended along with that of the characters’. (My, how that double genitive marvel of English never ceases to amaze me.)
The book is gone, yet already envelops the rest of my evening. The shadows cast by the falling sun weren’t even dramatically long. This footprint, this echo, a puddle, an augury, adds flavor to the day that I cannot wash out of my senses, not even with the stale taste of a hotdog from a lunch truck as I make my way to my next class.
I think I’m starting to like this not-having-a-timepiece lifestyle.
Sounds like paradise. I’ve got to fight just to read in my apartment; I can’t remember the last time I just read for hours on end until I lost track of time.
Caught me pretty off guard, I must say. And while you might claim that you’ve got to “fight” to get reading done, you still manage well over a book a week. How’s that stack up to the national average, I wonder?
Maybe I just have higher expectations for the amount of reading time I’m allowed.