the Hippo Brigade

I Used to Read.

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October 13, 2009

You can tell when a person reads a lot of books. You can tell from their vocabulary and the way they form a sentence.

You can tell by the way they watch a skirt or a patch of tall grass blowing in the wind. If you watch them closely, you can see them creating a narrative right behind their eyes.

People that read carry around a tiny notebook to scribble down observant thoughts, like, Girls with tight sweaters giggle too much, and always at the wrong times.

I used to read.

I used to write ordinary things in a notebook.

Now?

Now, I read catalogs. I’m not even refined enough to read magazines.

And when I do pick up the occasional magazine. I don’t read the articles. I find them too time consuming, and not very effective at holding my attention.

On a whole, I’ve stopped reading. Just stopped. My mind has become dumb.

I suppose I should remedy the situation and pick up a book. Maybe something classic, or post-modern.

But then again the mail just came and there’s a new Anthropologie catalog waiting for me not to read it.