Sul Campo Del Mare - Vilenica

V2-2010.PM51726/13/100, 12:14 PMViktória RadicsLectori SalutemI did nothing in my whole life but read, I mumbled to myself the otherday. Well, I wrote as well, but if reading was the sea, writing was the boat.Sometimes I wandered off with oars, sometimes without oars, as Hamvaswrites of essayists. Now and then I raise my face from the books, gaze atthe golden reflection on the wall and suddenly I don’t know anymorewhere I am, what this is good for. What am I actually doing and why?Within and beyond the theory, in spite of the decades of experience, Istill cannot tell what it really means to read.Yet, it should be a passion, somewhat like love, when you completelyforget about this very moment - and there appears a real or an imaginaryface of someone else who “explains” everything in a flash and you don’tneed to think of anything anymore. There is no such a thing in reading. Idon’t see the author’s face and I don’t read because of him. I read becauseI want to get away from myself and, in spite of that, to reach the momentthat would plunge me deep into myself or elevate me toward myself, notas an individual but anonymously, as a part of the world, as a participantin the universe or one of its variations, of a tiny particle, any kind of appurtenance- be it landscape, season, thought, idea or company.No, reading is no escape; it is an inclusion and connection, some strangesocial empathy, not necessarily for another human being, but for examplewith a rock or with an apparition, filtered through the mind and theheart. And, of course, reading is also an intellectual activity, perhaps simultaneouslya work of love, yearning for an attachment, for an elementalrelationship and authentic reactions; within this thirst for knowledgethat stimulates us to open the book, there is another kind of thirst – to beone with words, meanings and images. So – not yet to die. To enjoy, explain,admire—even despise the creation.I was used to read at the edge of a kitchen table where my mother waskneading dough, on the settee by the gauzy light of a lamp, lying on thedivan, stiffly sitting on a chair while chewing my pencil and removing mysplit ends, and outdoors at the seaside (I did pretty badly there), on thetrain (it worked especially well there, gazing through the window), inchangeable body postures, in diverse mental states – nothing matters,because you know that there is a certain point when you are absorbedinto the reading, when you take off and switch over. It is not just an eggthat is charred on the stove then – kitchenware too; you forget about yourpractice, nothing is left but a seed or a shell of your torments and desires.You transpose yourself into another world, and if you’re lucky you willfeel it more intensively; you disappear as in a fairy tale but you’re still“holding on” to yourself from within or without. You are conscious (onlycompletely sober, can one read), yet, in an altered state of consciousness,vibrating from the shooting spirits of inspiration, just like in the ancient172