On Story Sickness

     I used to be fascinated by the very idea of reading and writing. Especially writing. Man's ability to imbue dead matter with sense is astounding. I can remember a time, it was in London, as a small child. I was seated in a black cab facing the rear of the cabin, with my parents and brother. I had only just learned to read. The endlessly complex sensory world was no longer just a garish blur of colours and sounds. All of a sudden, these objects began speaking with me, personally. I was given a small notebook then, intended for me to scribble my infantile whims into. Instead, I wrote down every word I saw, most of them things like 'convenience', or 'licence' or 'yo-sushi'. But then, it felt as though each were a special message meant only for me.

     I was able to return to this childlike view of reading through your garden-variety serotonergens in recent years. I believe I have always had an air of lingering paranoia bottled up in the old planetarium. At a similar age I was infatuated with a girl in my class from preschool, and on returning home, I would often imagine her and her friends peering over the windowsill of my room on the first floor of my parents' house. I'd turn my back to them and slowly turn around again, and if I believed they were really there, if I'd sufficiently convinced myself, I would get this contracting feeling in my chest, would pull arms and legs to my body and fall to the floor, voluntarily, until almost prone and out of eyesight. Sometimes I could even see them.