Time Slips Away...

Every holiday is too short.
That is my considered opinion.
Every holiday runs short of time.
This is what I believe.
All holidays are too brief.
That is my conclusion.

← And that impending Monday morning, that swirling bilious cloud, is like the boiling atmosphere above Mount Doom in Mordor.
You know? Middle-Earth?
The Lord of the Rings?

My summer holiday is over. Is ending. Breathing its last gasps.
I have had a terrific time, sure. Visiting a great friend. Sleeping-in to the point of hibernation. And even my awake times have been wonderfully somnambulistic.
Ahh… holidays. So soon they end.

Tomorrow, I will again awaken much too early, get in my car and drive straight into the seething maw of Mount Doom.
One thing that never ceases to amaze me, however, is the following.
As much as I love to read books, and truly, in many ways, it is a major passion with me, [the love of reading]… I find that I do not really read any more when I have unlimited tracts of time stretching before me, as when the rumblings of Mount Doom are still spewing ash upon my back!
In other words… on holidays, I do not read as much as expected.
I bring with me much more than I ever consume.

For instance, in the past week, I have not even finished reading a wonderful book, by Michael Ondaatje. It’s called Divisadero. His new one.
The book is a gem. It is gorgeous. But somehow [I know not how, I do not understand the cosmic forces that restrict me]… I have not even finished this one book.
What ends up happening, is that my “time” becomes more sporadic… I only have snippets of it, in which to really read. Thus, a wonderfully convoluted book like Divisadero, [and by the way, reading Ondaatje at the best of times requires some good concentration and intellectual connectedness]… such a book becomes disjointed.
Even when I was in Mexico in January, I only managed to read a portion of one book.
It is a mystery to me, how unrestricted access to time seems to hamper my actual reading time!
Thankfully, such is not the case with all people.
A fellow blogger friend has recently returned from a holiday in the Bahamas and reports that she managed to read six books in less than two weeks!
BRAVO, I say!
Not everyone is as time-challenged as I am, when it comes to vacation-reading.

And now, I am going home with my unfinished Ondaatje.
And then tomorrow…. back to Mordor!
You know what I need?
A ring that makes me invisible.
No, no, I’m being serious. I think this would really help me.
People passing by, on the beach, would just see this book sort of floating there, pages being occasionally turned.
The book held by no one.

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