Reading takes you over like a fever.
You lay in bed, lose track of time in chunks.
You overheat.
Partners or housemates check in on you every few hours, because they can't tell the difference.
You drift away, stopping only for water or those other biological necessities you can't ignore, but even those are short and not as often as they should be.
You lose sight of this world.
What the text gives you, you try in turn to give life to in your mind, filling details where words can't.
How the pitch of voices sound, the colors of skin or clothing or plants or wallpaper or skies, the scents, the feel, the weight, all given definition where descriptions can never truly be precise, bridging the gap between the generality of language and the individuality of the senses.
Fever dreams, indeed
This filling out of a world that is separate of the one where the aches of old injuries and the heat of your body against mattress or couch uncomfort you, keeping you just tethered enough to not fall asleep or drift from your body completely, not resting but detached from the physical world
Some make you angry.
Some make you cry.
Some distract you enough that you attend to another need, or that need takes care of itself as the desires intoxicate you completely.
Few, but those you pursue most, leave you different.
They change how you see the world.
They change how you see other people.
They change how you see yourself.
They change you.
And as your mind sends little whirlpooling thoughts and ideas and emotions of into your head, like a canoe paddle through the still waters of a mountain lake,
They change how you write.
Writing is a less a fever than a quickening.
You describe it as creating, everyone does, but it is a summoning.
Stories take you.
They take the trillions of words in your mind, find shapes and tools you have gathered over decades now, and begin to build themselves.
Writing is a possession.
You give them tools, you show them how you are putting them together, you take snippets and words and clever phrases, and sometimes you hand them shapes of other stories.
And they listen to you.
For a while.
But the best ones, the longer ones you finish, the ones that people sing praises of you?
They finish themselves.
They shock you, often, in the way they turn, twist, defy you, condescend to you, filling themselves out and boring into the world outside of your head like creatures leaving nests behind.
Talking about either feels of solipsism.
Talking about either means talking about the airgap between your mind and reality, the disconnect you get from the physical that sometimes makes your fingertips numb.
Talking about either means talking about the way sometimes you must be alone, very alone, forget that other humans exist so that part of you heals back.
Can one write and not cave into the expanse within?
Can one read and not cave into the expanse within?
Can you?
Can you?
Can you talk of process, of perception, of making, of learning, of teaching, of empathizing, of performing, of passion, of understanding?
Can you build?
Can you convince others you have a mastercraft?
Can you convince others you have a great skill?
Can you convince others you have a skill?
Can you convince others you have worth?
Can you convince others of anything?
Can you
Will you
Ever convince yourself?
Finishing a story is coming up from possession.
You lurch back over it, trying to remember.
You pick up pieces.
You are ecstatic.
You are terrified.
You stand there with something new in this world, something that bares your mark.
You talk to people about it.
You show them.
You put it out in the world.
You succumb to crippling bouts of anxiety.
You wait nervously.
You hear back.
You hear back in waves, or sometimes not for months then overnight like grenade going off, or a few times, never at all.
Your fear recedes.
Your fear grows.
Your fear finds new shape.
You move on.
Your life goes on, goes back to normal.
You are just you.
Then some hidden word or thought is another incantation, and something starts taking your mind.
Reading leaves like a fever, too.
It runs its course.
You cool off.
The heat of the summer kicks on the A/C, or you slip out of the covers into winter cold.
You drink a great deal of water.
You shower off the sweat.
You eat.
You talk to loved ones, friends, family again.
You look healthy to them again, and some still worry, but most don't, and all worry less.
You are more alert.
You look back and wonder how much of that was real, and if the reading or fever was severe enough, how you even lived through it.
Your body develops defenses, or grows a secret new weakness.
Until, from a friend or a stranger, maybe at the bookstore or on the bus,
Someone passes you something, and a new reading creeps up on you.