On not being able to read

This experimental essay sets out an imaginative and cognitive space in which I might explore my bizarre and troubling experience of not being able to read. I open a book that I suspect will reveal things I want to know and I am unable to go beyond a few paragraphs. It is not due to a lack of time or dyslexia; it is about the emotional world that I enter when I read. The essay is not a flowing narrative because my mind does not think in that way about the problem; rather, it is a collection of notes for an unthought work.This is, actually, how I read - never quite going all the way. I write the essay not to solve the problem but to see if I can make something of it, which means encountering it and so feeling it all the more.