15.09.2025
‘Instead of suffering, shall we have another topic today?’ Alfonso asked me.
‘Well then, what would you like?’ I responded.
‘Isn’t it more the case of what you think your readers would like?’
‘Is it going to be a question for a question?’
‘Why not?’
‘You would rather have a whole conversation as a question?’
‘Don’t you think it’s possible?’
We both laughed. Fighting and laughing. We did those things the best.
‘So, the topic I will introduce,’ I continued, ‘is reading. When I finished that long trilogy that I was reading, I did not manage to slip into anything else. I made a desultory few pages into a children’s picture book about animal languages. That one is on my library app on my phone. Life is so busy it is hard to read anything.’
‘Didn’t you tell me,’ Alfonso smiled, ‘that there was a certain someone that read everything that you wrote on your blog for two whole years? Every night. Why were they reading and how did they accomplish the feat?’
I ignored the question. I had a theory. But dwelling on such topics was dangerous.
‘I am speaking of myself. I don’t have the requisite tranquillity to read nowadays.’
‘You are lying,’ said Alfonso. ‘How do you get such good marks on your part time university course around work hours? You do seventy or so hours a week on work, maybe even more. And yet you are still doing the reading and getting good grades on it.’
Alfonso was good at cross-examination.
‘I am talking about fiction. Which is supposedly the easiest of reads. But it goes back to the beginning of this conversation.’
‘In what way?’
‘You wanted a different topic from suffering. But suffering is all there is in my life. Reading is a great pleasure to me. It has been since I was a child. I was a precocious reader. Later in adult life, I did an English Literature degree and then a PhD in that subject. To give myself time to read. Yet now? Because I suffer so much, I find it extraordinarily difficult to lose myself in a book.’
‘You blame suffering. Why not blame distractions?’
‘Do you really believe that my attention span has atrophied with these users of their smartphones? I still read more in one day than most people manage in a month. Psychology articles, newspapers, magazines, poems, posts about history, art and culture. I don’t touch the fluff that they degrade their minds with. You are fortunate. You do not suffer. And therefore you read.’
‘Perhaps you should read to escape suffering. To lose yourself in another world.’
‘Before you take a step
Look where your feet are
Before you take a leap
Find what you are anchored to’
‘I make the wish for you to read.’
‘I make the wish to discover life instead. Instead of living as the dead and the dying.’
diary of a lone man 