Reading, My Life

Last night I stayed up very late trying to finish a book that I eventually conceded could be concluded in the morning. As I venture into another night of reading, this picture by Carl Spitzweg, a successful Romantic era German painter and poet, came to mind.

I feel this way often, though I am not the Poor Poet of the title. I did actually have a leak last fall, though not from the roof but a crack in a pipe of the tenant above me. But a pile of books by my futon, also on my bedside trunk, by my chair on a little stool, and in a crate specifically for the current must-reads and library books illustrates my passion, as it does his here.

I do occasionally tidy. But often in the morning, when I get up just at dawn specifically in order to read for a few hours before another day begins, I look around my apartment to see that the organizing of the night before, done in order to settle into my work, has somehow shuffled into wandering papers, socks forgotten on the floor, tea cups half drunk, magazines discarded to be recycled, yellow post-its strewn with thoughts.

And I love it.