Saturday, May 22, 2010

The Laws Of Distraction





"How about a fire?" Dave says, heading for the woodstove, and I smile, knowing I'll be toasty warm in--oh, forty-five minutes to an hour. The wood is already in, and the kindling chopped. Where everything jams up is the newspaper-crumbling. There is no sheet of newspaper, which Dave has theoretically already read, on which he cannot find something new to pique his interest. There's someone in the obituaries named Gladys who was only twenty-one; some guy thinks he can get a half-mil for the crappy store-front down the street; the entire east coast is graphically covered in raindrops. I get up and put on a sweater, and return to find out that Safeway is selling Fuji apples for 89 cents a pound, and it's still cold in the kitchen. We call this "reading the fire."

Both of us read the fire all day long. We launch into conversation with a particular point in mind, but something shiny will pop up to alter the trajectory, and our dialog lurches around until it founders in unfamiliar territory.

"I'm heading over to the hardware store..."
"The one on Fremont? Did you see that huge backhoe on 35th?"
"I think it's sewer work. Oh man, did I tell you? Kent's got rats again. Size of cocker spaniels."
"Don't forget to save those dog poop bags for Margo's."

By the time we've "read the fire" all the way into the subject of plastic pollution, the sorry state of plankton, and the fact we need to get a new crabbing license, we have no idea what we might have needed at the hardware store. We can guess all day and never get warm.

Personally, I can crumple newspaper like nobody's business, but I can't look up anything in the dictionary without reading the fire. It's not the worst thing. It's how I tripped over the word "steatopygia," meaning an excessive accumulation of fat on the buttocks. Tell me that isn't going to come in handy.

There are renowned writers who are accomplished fire-readers. James Michener, for instance, starts his books right around page 200, and then starts backing away. He's got someone sitting under a tree and fixin' to stir up the plot, and then he gets sidelined by the tree, and its history, and the contributions of the minerals in the soil, and the
composition of the substrate, and the geological record of upheaval, and the deposition of dinosaur poop, until he's backed himself right up to the Triassic in the preface. What makes him a renowned writer is he can eventually find his way back to the guy under the tree and finally start going a little forwarder. Whereas if I had tried to steer a novel that way, I'd have ended up in a ditch clutching a treatise on Wing Development in the Cretaceous.

Reading the fire is not the quickest way to do anything. But there's nothing like it if you want to call someone a fat-ass without their knowing it.

27 comments:

  1. Reading the fire is the only way. Problem is, in Houston we have little call for fires with out 80-degree weather and horrid humidity. I ponder -- does this mean that those Yankee, the Fire Starters, are smarter?

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  2. I don't use the fireplace much so around here it would be reading the recycling. It drives my
    daughter crazy when I head out with the recycling bin and she finds me a half an hour later sitting on the front steps reading the recycling. You never know what you've already missed!

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  3. We use old magazines to start the fire and no one lets me do it, because I would then be reading the fire for days. I am a huge procrastinator and a big fan of distractions. Read on, I say!

    ♥Spot

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  4. I always thought that reading everything in sight was normal--every street sign, every item on the menu, every word in the paper, etc.--until my first husband pointed out that it was not. I felt so abnormal, but then I met my soulmate who does the same thing. We've been married 15 years reading the fire all along. I was his the moment I saw he kept a dictionary by his bed...

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  5. The dictionary by the bed! The ultimate aphrodisiac. No reason there can't be chocolate-covered strawberries there, too, I'm thinking. Carol, I hope you're not reading the sides of the cereal boxes out there, too. And Jerry? You tell us--does the shoe fit?

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  6. "Reading the fire" in the Arizona desert is like "reading the ice cubes" in an igloo. Nevertheless, Martha and I do alright:

    "Do you remember what we were talking about?"
    "Nope. Do you?"
    "Nope. But that reminds me that pukeberries are on sale for ..."

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  7. Yep.... Jerry, can you put out the cat. flap flap flap, pick up the magazine hey did you see this article... back to chair.. it's right here on this page...hey Jerry, can you put out the cat.... flap, flap, flap....

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  8. I was going to comment about the distraction thing, but then I got to thinking: why only one poop reference in this comment? Oh, wait, the bags. That's two. We have to take ours over to the market, the County doesn't do bags. In fact, the Country doesn't do shit. Which reminds me...

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  9. County, that was supposed to be. But the country doesn't do all that well either.

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  10. Murr, something tells me you'll dig this site: http://users.tinyonline.co.uk/gswithenbank/unuwords.htm Of course it's much more fun to spend hours stumbling through the dictionary oneself, but it condenses some of the choicest terms (including the fabled "steatopygia"; "bathykolpia"--its, erm, Northern equivalent; and, one of my new favorites (and hopefully unrelated to the previous two) "jumentous.")

    Is it bad to read cereal boxes? There is something to distract you on EVERY SINGLE SIDE (six of them, usually!) What could be better??

    Thanks for the post--it is so reassuring to know there are other reading addicts out there.

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  11. I'm happy to report that this phenomenon happens to me too. I'm embarrassed to report that it's usually the funny pages.

    Although I do identify with the dictionary thing, though. Seems like every time I'm paging through there I encounter at least 30 words I didn't know that I think I should've learned by now.

    Jules Verne read the fire too. In every book he'll mention something scientific and then spend the next three paragraphs discoursing on it like a university professor.

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  12. Reading the fire. Interesting. We used to do something similar when we had a wood-stove, but we called it "burning the junk mail". It kept us warm all winter one year. Then we started using corn, and found out all about the "green heat" of corn. Now we recycle the junk mail in the burn barrel outdoors while burning corn in the stove. I'm not sure how we justify it, but there you go.

    www.tothenines9.blogspot.com
    :)

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  13. And here all along I thought it was just me.

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  14. Our local newspaper has shrunken to the point where there isn't enough of it to start a fire. We have a gas fireplace anyway... just flip the "on" switch and instant atmosphere/heat. Love it!

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  15. Sounds like a great way to pass the time.

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  16. "Reading the fire." What a fabulous euphemism and a charming post.

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  17. Everybody go check out CNemes' link up there. Treasure, unburied and lying all over the ground jest for pickin' up. Robert, I know what you mean. Our paper is so thin you can read the paper through it. I've never heard of burning corn, but I have heard of a use for corn cobs that is more appropriate for a poop post.

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  18. I'm surprised no one has mentioned "reading the housework" or "reading the mailbox". I have found it physically impossible to dust around the piles of magazines that cover the end tables without them ruffling their pages enticingly. "Just a quick look, OK?" Twenty minutes later the Endust has coagulated into a gooey mess, but by God, I now know all about Jupiter's moons! And that's a good thing.

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  19. I have a dictionary and a thesaurus by my bed! So there!

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  20. Bruce, sounds like you're expecting company.

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  21. Murr, I always love your writings! Perhaps it's because I relate? I devour every newspaper online I can get. I have to not only read the article in the local paper, but then google it so I can get other sources and their opinions. The Associated Press probably has me on their "do not answer" call sheet.
    p.s. One sunny June day, looked up a word in the dictionary and was so fascinated by the numerous definitions that I spent the enitire summer between my freshmen and sophomore year of high school reading the entire dictionary. There's one fire I'll never have to put out again.

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  22. Fabulous, love the air of intellectual distraction on display here. I'd love to say I have the same problem, but it's not quite the same with the central heating switch.

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  23. Ivy, the entire dictionary? It's a page-turner for sure, but I hate when the ending just peters out.

    Mme. DeFarge: back away from the switch! Central heating promotes illiteracy.

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  24. Fabulous, love the air of intellectual distraction on display here. I'd love to say I have the same problem, but it's not quite the same with the central heating switch.

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  25. Bruce, sounds like you're expecting company.

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  26. Ivy, the entire dictionary? It's a page-turner for sure, but I hate when the ending just peters out.

    Mme. DeFarge: back away from the switch! Central heating promotes illiteracy.

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  27. Reading the fire. Interesting. We used to do something similar when we had a wood-stove, but we called it "burning the junk mail". It kept us warm all winter one year. Then we started using corn, and found out all about the "green heat" of corn. Now we recycle the junk mail in the burn barrel outdoors while burning corn in the stove. I'm not sure how we justify it, but there you go.

    www.tothenines9.blogspot.com
    :)

    ReplyDelete