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V ictoria
SroppidLo
My reading disorder
Ah, spring! Whales mijp-ate. Crocuses and
daffodils pop out o f the warming earth. Catkins flu ff
the limbs o f w illo w thickets. Band-tailed pigeons
chortle in old spruce trees. The crow people beak
around in my woodlot clutching bits o f soft material and
twigs
Spring, when a young man's fancy turns to thoughts
o f love and baseball and, well, bicycles.
For several decades now I've had two bikes in my
stable. The first is a tough old buffalo, a Peugeot
mountain bike, time-proven, a trusted and battle-scarred
veteran o f countless campaigns in the foothills behind
town. Its frame tubes are heavy and tough, like old
plumbing pipes welded together. We've rattled and
spun down thousands o f miles o f logging roads and dirt
tracks together. O f all the things which have passed in
and out o f my life, it remains my favorite—excluding
books, o f course. On the first day I got it, some twenty
years ago now, I rode whooping across a few
neighborhood lawns, transported back to youth
memory.
Its companion fo r many years has been a shimmering
Imron red, stainless and chrome racing stallion from the
Specialized Bicycle Company, frisky and lithe,
intolerant o f user error, a bike named "Allez," ("G o!" or
"Come on." in French), and it certainly does that.
Tw o weeks ago, in a rare conspiracy o f good fortune,
spring came sashaying in just as I acquired a fine new
handmade racing bicycle. The bike fell to me through
the admirable offices o f M r. Robert Ragsdale, a
connoisseur o f sweet road bikes and a stout fellow well
met. She's a Belgian model from the salons o f Eddy
M erckx, togged out in a parfait o f succulent Italian
colors, a sleek and nubile creature, playful and bom to
run.
These things are skittery, like terns in flight. The
Campagnolo running gear looks like Zuni jew elry,
cleanly curved, trim , burnished, aesthetically apt.
The fo llo w in g day, accompanied by my riding friend
Laurie Beers, I taxied the new machine onto the
macadam, snapped into the pedals, and spun toward
Seaside. March sun glinted o f f the spokes. The bicycle
and I streamed north on Highway 101 like a greased
arrow. I felt like Hunter S. Thompson rocketing out o f
Golden Gate Park, listening as the "strange music"
begins, a tune played out along the edge, a song o f
wind, and speed, trepidation and freedom. Huzzah fo r
spring and the beckoning road!
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Wc rearranged our living room furniture
and now it is obvious wc have too much stuff.
The new arrangement points out how many
books and magazines and newspapers we have—
mostly mine that I keep thinking I'll read. In
some ways I have a reading addiction, but I'm
like a person sullen ng from anorexia. I deny
myself the unbodied luxury o f reading. I snatch
small moments o f reading between tasks or while
waiting for something else to happen. 1 surround
myself with the tantalizing enticements o f my
addiction. I save them, eye them guiltily, but I
don't “get around to" reading them.
1 believe, truly, that to sit down and read
for an extended penod would be a luxury I cannot
afford, especially if it's something strictly
pleasurable. I depnve m yself o f the luxury o f a
well-written novel, the way the dieter denies
herself the luxury o f a chocolate mousse.
The problem with this is that I'm
surrounded by half-read magazines: Orion, Yes!,
The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Metro, The Bear
Deluxe, Tikkun, Residential Architect, Home
Power, alumni magazines from two universities,
stray copies o f The Peaceworker, The LA T im es,
USA T o d a y and The N ew York T im es Sunday
Magazine. You see, I haven't collected light
weight stuff that one could buzz through in a
half-hour sitting.
I don't see m yself as a reader, which my
husband thinks is hilarious. O f course, he doesn't
think he's a reader either, while he plows through
David Halberstam's "The Fifties," while taking a
break from a more difficult book, "The Whole
Shebang,” which explains the origin o f the
umvese.
Like a person with an eating disorder, I
don't have an accurate self image. I don't think o f
myself as a reader because I compare m yself with
an extreme example instead o f the general
population. I compare m yself with m y former
husband who read even more than I do. He was a
researcher with a Ph.D., a super model o f
reading, but I've been slow to figure that out.
Reading probably has a magnetic pull
for me because it was my great escape as a
teenager. Like kids today hooked on computer
games and TV , it was my way o f disappearing
into another reality. High school in a hard-luck
logging tow n, isolated both by geography and
my family's problems, being required to care for
my two half sisters while my mother headed to
the tavern, meant 1 had two means o f escape:
books and late night television. My first
exposure to Shakespeare was Laurence Olivier on
Channel 6 late at night.
I could disappear into a book. I may as
well not have been at home. Very irritating for
my mother who seemed to view me, the much
older daughter, as more servant than offspring.
(How's that for a teenage viewpoint?) I had the
audacity to be in a book rather than at her beck
and call.
So reading got me into trouble, but it
also saved my bacon. I was lucky to be able to
read something once and comprehend, because I'd
rather read novels than do homework, and
crammed my work into study hall. But, I earned
scholarships and went to college, where there was
more to read than I'd ever imagined. Now reading
took on a different flavor, a requirement which
sometimes felt like a Thanksgiving dinner every
day: three Shakespeare plays a week plus reading
for two or three other lit courses. My eyes were
bigger than my stomach. I survived, but I lost
my appetite. I completed my degree, but I turned
away from the world o f words. It was as if I
realized I needed a fitness program to balance all
I'd consumed.
N ow I'm back in the world o f words,
but I'm disgorging them as much as I'm
consuming them. Not quite bulimic, I'm actually
taking them o ff little by little, like a slow
weight loss program, letting go o f all the words
and experiences I've consumed over fifty years.
One writer I admire seems to have a
solution for the likes o f me. He is a true scholar
and therefore must struggle with how much to
read and when. He's told me his routine:
Breakfast, a favorite radio program, one hour o f
reading, and then to work. Perhaps I can try
that—actually allow m yself a real hour o f reading
each day. Perhaps my craving would be satisfied
and these pounds, 1 mean piles, would gradually
dwindle.
V ictoria S to p p ie llo is a w riter livin g in Ilw aco,
a t the lo w e r left co rn er o f W ashington sta te.
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