reading

laundry

The early morning had an autumnal chill in the air and was overcast like so many clouded minds waking to the new day.

I was at the laundromat; not one of my favorite things. I go early, making every attempt to avoid the greedy rush of individuals jockeying for machines.

This morning eight other people had the same idea.

I had a book by Peter Handke that I was reading – ON A DARK NIGHT I LEFT MY SILENT HOUSE. It’s a short novel with prose that reads like poetry. It travels the razors edge of reality and dreams, so-much-so that, at times, I wasn’t sure if I was reading a really great story or if I was dreaming of reading. As I slipped farther and farther into the world of the story the sounds of the laundromat seemed more distant, muffled, even murky.

My quiet reading repose was interrupted by the RAT-A-TAT-TAT of machine gun fire – the sound of death – blasting from the mobile device of a seventy-year-old gray-haired grandmother playing an obviously violent video game and sitting near, too near me, lost in her own oblivion.
Annoyed by the cruel aural assault I just closed my eyes and let the sounds of the laundromat merge into a cacophonous free-jazz experiment; Albert King was playing on the overhead sound system swinging with updates about Hurricane Matthew, on the television, merging with the friendly chatter of others who seem to enjoy laundry – and company. Suddenly, a searing break of five washing machines whirring and buzzing, in their wild interlude, on the spin cycle in complete synchrony eventually to subside and merge with the rest of the sounds in this social sound-fest ending with the click click click click click of the same five machines stopping, signaling the cycle was over.

After drinking in all the sounds it was time to dry out, fluff and fold. The feeling of warm, fresh softness carried out to the car. Another week has ended. Now ready to start a new week, clean and clear. Ready to carry-on after this unpleasant sensorial massage. Ultimately satisfied. Paradox of mundanity.

Has anyone else noticed how we’ve become a culture of scanners?
People don’t comprehend what they read anymore.
It’s as if they cherry-pick a few words of text and jump to conclusions – almost always wrong.
No matter how clear the text may be,
no matter how spelled-out it is in black and white
their interpretation and conclusion is wrong.

I’ve witnessed this more and more mostly at work but it’s also been happening in my daily interactions where written text is involved.

At work (and home) I’ll send emails and get serious reply’s that have nothing to do with what I had emailed. And I have to re-send the email and highlight the words they skipped. They will then email back saying, “why did you send this to me again” – and my response is “because you didn’t answer my question”. They they respond, “Oh, I see now…” So much time is wasted when people just read the subject line or scan the content without taking the time to read and comprehend what was written.

Naturally, some questions come to mind:
What are the consequences of this?
How much longer will it take to get things done?
How many mistakes will be made?
Has technology made it possible for things to move too fast?
Has technology made comprehension impossible?
Has technology made idiots of humanity?
Is it necessary to dumb-down the written word to a brief “texting” and “tweeting” format?
At what point will communication have nothing to do with the word?
At what point will communication be just a series of gestures and expressions?
At what point will humanity become digital grunting cave-men/cave-women?
Even if things are reduced to pictograms – will that help?
Will all books in the future be solely image-based with no text (not for reasons of censorship and control – as in Fahrenheit 451 – written by Ray Bradbury – but…) out of an inability/unwillingness to read?
Will written content just be fuel for fire?

I’m happy to say that most of my friends who are avid readers have not yet fallen prey to this disease. But I am seeing it spread (unfortunately).

Treatment for this disease:
Time. Taking time to read, comprehend, think about – then respond/act.
Stop & Read.

A fun song from 1991 by indie band Mega City Four off their album Sebastopol Rd.
In this case use the word “listen” as a metaphor for “read” and this song will be equally applicable.
Accurate comprehension depends on taking the time to STOP and read. Some of you will undoubtedly just jump to the video without reading this post.