"My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That’s heaven. That’s gold, and anything else is just a waste of time.” – Cormac McCarthy
Read Local
My perfect day is sitting in a room with some bound sheets of paper, covered in ink by the likes of Cormac McCarthy. And that specific author always reminds me of how much I love “reading local”. A few years ago, I was driving between Texas and Arizona and reading “Blood Meridian” (not whilst driving, obviously) and seeing in real time the nature he describes, and the landscapes that oscillate between hell and paradise in the book. “Reading local” is one of my mantras, it never fails to deliver greater depth to the reading experience, be it due to the dry air, or the way the light bounces off the ground, or whatever. As I’m typing this, I’m travelling in the Czech Republic and reading “Letters to Olga” by Václav Havel, the Czech playwright-turned-dissident-become-President, where he describes, through a long series of letters to his wife (the titular Olga) a period of several years of incarceration for “subversion against the state” in the early 1980s. The letters veer from very mundane requests like sending more toothpaste because he’s run out, to more serious phenomenological discussions (don’t ask), and descriptions of the walks he misses in the woods outside Prague. And it just wouldn’t be the same if I were reading this on a beach somewhere. The smallest details that he describes somehow come more alive to me as I am immersed in the country he writes of. So plan ahead, folks. Next time you head to your next destination, figure out which book you’re going to pack in your suitcase.
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