Where the Time Goes

I used to have time to read, but then I moved to Los Angeles. And bought a car. This machine for speedy transit, it turns out, has just about killed off one of my chiefest pleasures. And sure, the fact that I've got a movie out and there are a billion things to do has contributed as well, but this loss of reading time has been going on ever since I moved out here. Now it's worse because of the other demands on my time, but it's really just a matter of degree.

In Boston and Chicago, I took public transportation. Walked to the T or the L, found a comfortable place to stand amidst all the other rush-hour commuters, and opened up a book. And I wasn't reading lightweight fluff on these trips, no, I read Beckett's trilogy almost entirely on the subway, and most of Proust's a la recherche du temps perdu. My other best reading time was the lunch hour, and even that has been reduced now--after all, who can keep his weight in check if the only places available are either too expensive or too fast-foody?

Reading at home really doesn't work: too many distractions. (And now there's something that is being referred to as "TiVo guilt," as your TiVo playlist gets longer and longer.) Of the books I said I was reading when I first started blogging, back in July or so of 2005, I'm still working my way through two of them: the Gore Vidal essays and the Bill Clinton biography. (Granted, they're both huge.)

Put it this way, though: last night my free time was taken up at dinner with a friend who just turned forty; tonight there is a "check disc" of Zen Noir to look at, the prototype of the DVD, and we have to press every button, listen to every track, watch the movie multiple times to make sure it all works as it's supposed to; tomorrow night is a dinner at a club called Aqua with, supposedly, a bunch of production-company people and managers and agents and whatnot. Plus, somewhere in all this, I have to pull scenes from the movie that TV stations can use as clips if they run a review of the DVD. Time, time, time, can anyone please send me the gift of a little more time?

All of this is, of course, in aid of the big push, the fierce quest to finally achieve what I've been wanting to achieve all my life. What does it mean, though, that reading time, one of my greatest pleasures, was the first thing to be sacrificed?

Things Officially Get Worse

Remember this moment, when all the fat cats smiled and applauded as the dream of America was officially dumped into the trash: