word junkie dialogue

Nowadays it’s true I can only sleep when I have a book in my hand – What’s that? – Yeah! Honestly. With my fingertips touching the open page where the book rests on my sheet-wrapped body, almost as if I was reading Braille – That must be an odd sight - I suppose. It’s as if some part of the book still transfers itself beyond the act of reading, you know; hypnotising me in the moments before unconsciousness – I can’t say it’s something I’d particularly like, I mean I’d never be able to fall asleep like that - All the characters become accessible to me in one go and even though I know inevitably I am going to dream and would have, of course, without the book, there’s still the warm pleasure of escaping through the actual fibres of it, it’s substance there matters, like it is grounding something and yet at the same time offering me the chance to leap – To leap? – Yes! I know this sounds crazy but things don’t fall apart then; there is form, imagery, access into the world of the book through my half-awake/asleep mind, my imagination goes further, it actually adds to the fiction, playing out new plots, following avenues that never existed until then, all so brightly coloured and rotating on a kind of . . . carousel of words - And what happens when you don’t have a book to hand? – Oh that’s hell. I can’t sleep. Simple as that. Find myself opening and closing the curtains, looking out into the garden, which at night is odd you know because there’s like this orange band of light across the grass and I don’t know where it comes from – An orange light? – Yeah. Well, anyway, I can’t sleep without a book – You tried drinking? – Yes – And? – Nothing. Just makes me feel angry, stifled – Anger is energy – So they say. No, I need the constant of a book, you know, the stream – What happens when you meet someone, I mean when you’re not alone in bed? Do you get all ‘Scheherazade’ on them? – Yes! I read to them – You read to them? – Yeah – Before, after, or during? – Not during, come on, how could you read to someone during – Well, you can do it when you’re sleeping – No, not when I’m sleeping. That’s what I’m saying: I can’t sleep unless I’m actually physically touching a book – So there you go. What do you say after then, post-coitally? Can I imagine the scenario: Wow, that was great, the earth moved, now do you mind if I just put War & Peace between us, I have to touch it? – I’ve never read War & Peace – That’s not my point. It’s just odd behaviour – I suppose it is a problem - You know you should be careful, books are thieves of time, they are procrastination for eggheads – Well I think people are dismissive of themselves when they don’t want to read – Maybe, but there’s reading and there’s reading. In your case it’s obviously an addiction – But how can you know yourself, how can you take yourself seriously in the world, if you don’t read? Uh? – Perhaps that’s so. Your priorities are all out of balance. You need words to guide you all the time, other people's words – You think? – I don’t think, I know – Maybe you’re right - You know you could advertise yourself as The Library Lover, kisses and words given for free – (thinks) That’s not so bad. I mean, I quite like it – Christ, next thing you know you’ll be claiming you’re a goddamn poet!! – Mmm? – Listen, I want to help you, really I do. I knew a guy once, travelled everywhere on buses, I don’t mean just locally, I mean huge day long, week long, journeys on National Express, Magic Bus, Greyhounds, depending on where he was or what his destination was. He was like you – How so? – Well all he would do was read on the journey; I mean that I can understand, after all what else are you going to do? But sometimes he’d only travel so he could read, see? He liked to do one specific thing each time: at the end of the journey he would always leave the book on the bus, whether he’d finished it or not (though usually he had). He’d slip it into one of those elasticised pockets in the back of the seat in front of him. You see he’d fallen in love with the notion that he was leaving a trail of novels across the country; he believed there was the potential for some kind of literary synchronicity, a meeting of minds; that the next person in that seat would pick up the book, read it, fall in its thrall and pass it on; that Fate had somehow offered them this book and it was semi-magical that it was there at all. His theory, his ultimate hope was that, eventually, if these people after him kept leaving the books too, he’d catch up with one and all the subterfuge and gain and cowardice and joy, all the human experience of the ensuing readers, would be in that one tome, that it would have become, somehow, a new book, an archaeological or sociological object, beyond a book even, the most alive, the most living book in the world – Yes. Yes. Yes. I see – You want to know what happens to him? – What? – He dies of a broken heart. This anticipatory vacuum he had in him that he wanted to fill remained empty. He died chasing a dream – Quixotic? – If you must. Sad thing is one book did make its way right the way round the world and back to him – Which one? – Doesn’t matter. The point I’m making is that it wasn’t enough for him; his quest had grown into a spectre within and eventually it was beyond repair. Now a book like that might be your cure, don’t you think? – Do you think? – I don’t know. It’s just a suggestion that’s all - Do you have it? – It so happens I do – Oh, boy! I’d love to read it. Can I read it? – Well, you can have it for sure, but you can’t actually read it – Why not? – Because, somehow, perhaps through sheer use, so many hands on it, moving across it, so many fingertips or bookmarks, whatever, the words have virtually disappeared, utterly worn away – Then, what use is it to me? – Think of it as a clean, empty Pandora’s box; a fresh start, a step that’s all – To what? – I don’t know, just tell it to be your cure and maybe it will become so, fill it with your words and then sleep but promise me one thing – What? – You have to promise, then you can have it – Okay, I promise – Never put it between you and your lover – Sure. I promise that – Here you go then – Wow, it’s so light, I though it’d be really heavy – No – Where you off to? – Oh, don’t mind me; I’ve got a bus to catch . . .