Interminitis

You know, my dear Lady Ursula, that each summer I suffer from progressively huger bouts of interminitis, the disease that incapacitates readers when they encounter a particularly fetching stretch of text.

It's simple. You pick up a book. You continue reading the book. You do not drop the book after chapter five. You continuing reading of the book, become engrossed in its subtle progression. You want to dwell there, within it, at least kind of. More so and more so you delight in its plot, character, mood. You read and read and read and read and then.

And then you stop.

Interminitis strikes, the disease of the fear of the end you are rushing toward, the very momentum pushing you toward closure. You are eyeing the view from the middle of a bridge suspended between the first page and last. You dont want to cross over to the other side because the view from the middle of the bridge, novel, plot is just deliciously all encompassing and full of promise. There is more, it promises. At this crucial moment you realize the "more" is an illusion. More and more, and yet, the more you reach for, the less there will be. If you continue, you yourself will continue shrinking the distance between your delight and its imminent consummation, the closure towards which all books tend and where all words end. A disaster of emotion, a clenched heart awaits.

So you halt and if you are struck by a particularly virulent strain of the virus, you never move again until you have forgotten where you came from and you have to retrace your steps and start anew. Of course, that is not truly anew and yet it has to be for darned if you even remember the names of all the characters, as you have dawdled so long indecisively, you remember smatterings but also enough to taint the purity of the experience.

Thus it happened to me last summer as I never finished _Shadow of the Wind__ and remember it in its barest outline. This year, a book on sharks and a blond awaits my pleasure still as I have been stalled by an amazing development within that I almost do not wish solved. And dear dear Earnest, my dearly deceased benefactor and erstwhile husband, often taunts me in my dreams,

Has Mrs Dalloway thrown her party yet?

Indeed, Mrs. Dalloway is still where I left her some time ago, half on her way to her party, never quite holding it, like a silent form trapped in mid plot on account of my affliction. It is a cruel situation, though it can also work for the good--in my world, the treacherous horse never crosses the gates of Illium.