reading time

The Imposter by Damon Galgut

Reading is one of my favourite pastimes but this year I just don’t seem to find the time to read. Google “finding time to read” and you’ll find this is a pretty common modern dilemna. That elusive time issue.

In between teaching twice a week, going to class myself once a week, writing this blog whenever I can, cooking, washing, meditating at the end of the night and spending time with the girls I really don’t know how to make more time for reading. It makes me respect our President Zuma even more, he has to run a country and manage a polygamous relationship. Not that I don’t read. When I’m not roaming the backyard, I spend the day immersed in some sort of information processing activity on the flickering screen.

Reading books of course is a whole different world. You may have noticed that my “What I’m listening to” section changes a lot more regularly then the “What I’m reading”. This state of affairs was and still so afflicts me that I almost dropped out of the book club. Were it not for the wonderful company of the other members I might have very well have. It’s funny because last year at this time I was lamenting my lack of meditation practice and how I’d let my writing skills down. Reading for me is a way of being immersed in an artwork. Unlike my beautiful Clementina which I savour as I walk in the door, a book lasts the length of the time you read it. Everything else is an echo. In that time I can often feel my expression being moulded to the style of the writer and my awareness heightened by their subtle observations. A book literally gets under the skin!

What has recently replaced all this is going to book readings. I’ve only been to two so far. This week I was at Boekehuis for a reading and discussion by Damon Galgut of his book The Imposter. This is the best of both worlds, a little excerpt read by the writer, followed by an insight into their process. It’s wonderful. Blackie always insists that audio books are made wonderful by the beautiful reading of theatre hardened drama persona’s, but I disagree. They do play a hugely important role as storyteller but it’s the story for me. Perhaps it is because I can leap into my imagination from spoken word, not so much in poetry but in prose. So you can imagine a drama-trained author reading his work and responding to some pretty probing intellectual questioning. I don’t even know if I want to read the book, it may taint the echo of his words drawing pictures into himself.

listening to readings

Reading, what a pleasure. . . The way a book can transport, mesmerise, have you groggy-eyed at morning from an all-night feast. Books are a real sanctuary. I’m even in a book club!!  You may laugh at this last assertion, but when I revealed this to a friend the other day, her tweet came back as “You teach yoga, you’re in a book club, you’re so bohemian! Or gay…?” I get this a lot, good thing I didn’t tell her about my sewing classes, I would have been sunk!!

I’m also really into Audio books. I get them from the Listener’s Library. I’ve often been accused of being somehow at fault or of cheating, but traffic has never been the same. Sometimes I’m even late to work because I’m sitting in the car park listening to some riveting part of the story that can’t wait until the trip back home. I think it’s unfair to feel guilty for listening to your favourite stories, after all, the first stories we ever heard were from mouth to ear and for most of us indigenous Africans, that is still how we learnt the most powerful of our childhood stories.  You could even argue, that first came the word and it’s reverberations permeate reality to this day. There is power in the oral story telling tradition. For me it has revealed the flow of sentences and the imagery that follows in their wake.

So today, when I was spending another distracted day at the office looking for widgets for the blog, I thought I must find a “What am I reading” widget. I failed to find one. If you have any suggestions please tell me. In thinking about the widget, I decided to be true to what I really do. I had to do a bit of HTML coding but you will now find not only the “What am I reading” section, but also “What am I listening to”.

Don’t judge me now. Think of it as the upliftment of the other senses. Modern society is so dominated by the two receptors at the front of our heads, let’s give a chance to the others.