Reading Moby Dick has become important to me because it requires the patience I worry I’m losing. Melville will pause the narrative to spend 10 pages anthologizing the different categories of whale, and the subcategories of those, at which point it becomes tempting to scan the paragraphs mindlessly and wonder when I’ll get to A Hundred Years of Solitude, or watching Pulp Fiction, or a thousand other things I should have done by now. And then I’ll come across his description of the mealy-mouthed porpoise (“He is of quite a neat and gentleman-like figure”) or of fish without spouts (“I deny their credentials as whales”) and be reminded that the point of reading is, in fact, reading—not having-read.

I’m all too-familiar with what Sharp describes, having tackled Melville’s book for the first time this summer (and fall...). It truly was an exercise in patience, in waiting for a payoff that you’re not even sure is coming. 

But there are so many books on my to-read list that even when I’m reading more immediately rewarding texts, like Patricia Grace’s Potiki (which I’m working through now), I find myself checking how many pages are left, or wondering if I’d like another book on my list even more. I’m a huge critic of people who make broad generalizations about the worthlessness of my generation, but I do think we’ve become bereft of anything resembling an attention span. Or maybe that’s just me.

I need to stop counting how many pages are left and let myself get swept up in stories like I used to. I need to start finding joy in exercising, rather than having-exercised. In writing, instead of having-written.

20 April 2012. (by greeniegurl)

It's been a good day. It's my nieces 21st birthday today, man I wish I was back home right now celebrating with the rest of the family. I'm homesick, homesick for my family, for my sisters, nieces and nephews, I'm homesick for a good hearty feed of boilup, for a in ground hangi, so miss been around my family but I have to do what I gotta do, I have my own family now and they are where my top priority lies.

My Taimana spent most of today laid up in bed, she fell ill this morning while having her cup of tea, suddenly she had the highest fever, threw up all over herself and the shivers took over her all in a matter of minutes so I threw hwe into a nice warm bath (to clean the spew off of her) then tucked her back into bed with a movie while the boys and I continued on with the day.

Storm hit this afternoon, that blemin shot up out of nowhere too, thunder n lightning and then the rain, that was nice but I hope it don't stick around too long.