Too Much Reading, or, Paging Apostasy

I miss the distance of criticism.

To stand aloof in the slightly pained stance of unutterable uniqueness—that is the faint implication of commentary. The calm gaze of the critic glows forth from the singular abundance of an ossified criterion chiseled to perfection: the honing of the self.

And this distinction, the incommensurable contrast between the individual and his environment, the slow space of brewing between the comprehensive gaze and the crafted response--this I miss in the monolithic lethargy of unpunctuated comprehension, the guilty gluttony of mere knowledge. The protracted inhale must give birth to my sigh, both enraptured and fatigued with the inestimable intricacy of life.

And yet even these verbose exultations ring of over-richness, of a spoiled intellect, the mind's consumerism...

I must speak. And the world, my insatiable interlocutor, both aggravates and enchants as I try to get a word in. To respond to life's ecstatic soliloquy—that is the vanity that shames me into a stutterless silence.