Monday, November 12, 2007

A DAY WELL SPENT

Bed and Book

I'm lying in the bed with my eyes shut feeling the afternoon passing by the transpiring quality of light. This apparent turning of sun registers across windows, lids and retinas, is that incremental time piece we hardly need check: like hunger it registers on its own, awaits our cognisance.
These thoughts are moments in a continuum that fills my time spent in bed. I've taken to saying, again, I was meant to live in a studio apartment so central is my bed to daily activities like reading and eating that most people with more space do elsewhere. I eat more breakfasts and diners in bed than out--a wonderful contraction of budget, an inverse allocation of funds stay in the bank, much as I stay in the bed. Don't think I don't get up and out of bed in the morning, I do. I just get back with a tray of tea, breakfast and the newspaper.

I clearly need some ergonomically designed lap-top prop to make computing in bed as enjoyable as eating and reading real books in bed, which it currently is not for me and anyone else who has a back that likes deluxe treatment and rebels at anything less. Surely this is all that stands between me and blogging heaven--a lock and load of entries, daily commentary, missives into the ether of web life.

Me, I'd always rather leave my desk and my desktop and go lie down than stay another minute at the computer than I have to. Surely this happens to legions of others. Sitting is not as natural to me as lying down.

The book, "Fencing the Sky" by James Gavin recently inspired such bold measures as a day in bed. It helped that it was cold, that my mind and body had not adjusted to the seasonal change. Once, this kind of leisure was at least a monthly enjoyment. Into any real break between projects, into the ebb of my work life, always came these calm indulgences with a novel. But then I became a distracted person, against my own will, and this time honored habit dissapated.

How many books do we read and upon finishing, or even before, we plan on starting all over again at the beginning, so happily are we engaged with this author that we want a repeat. Bravo we shout with this emotion.

Essay by Rosie Dempsey

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