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Sep. 5th, 2009 04:18 pmFor me, reading a really good novel is like racing: while you are in it, you are living so entirely in the moment that your thoughts are nowhere but on the next word, the next page, the next stroke with your blade (paddle). You are nowhere but there; the mind is fully in the present experience.
That being so, when you finish it's almost a shock. Suddenly you are back in the world where your thoughts wander forward and backward and elsewhere and inward and outward; such thoughts are my normal mode of being, so not being in that mode leaves me in a place of timelessness (the present, which has neither past nor future), and when I am finished it is *almost* as if the race, or the novel, never happened, except for the ripples and repercussions left with me by the experience.
Yes, this is what I did today.
That being so, when you finish it's almost a shock. Suddenly you are back in the world where your thoughts wander forward and backward and elsewhere and inward and outward; such thoughts are my normal mode of being, so not being in that mode leaves me in a place of timelessness (the present, which has neither past nor future), and when I am finished it is *almost* as if the race, or the novel, never happened, except for the ripples and repercussions left with me by the experience.
Yes, this is what I did today.