On Reading, On Slowing Down

"'Read him slowly, dear girl, you must read Kipling slowly. Watch carefully where the commas fall so you can discover the natural pauses. He is a writer who used pen and ink. He looked up from the page a lot, I believe, stared through his window and listened to birds, as most writers who are alone do. Some do not know the names of birds, though he did. Your eye is too quick and North American. Think about the speed of his pen. What an appalling, barnacled old first paragraph it is otherwise.' This was the English patient's first lesson about reading."
~The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje

I'm feeling too rushed, like everything I'm doing is just a step on my way to somewhere else, but I don't know where and it doesn't really matter, so long as I'm always moving towards it. Without really looking around at life. "I have spent weeks in the desert forgetting to look at the moon." Take a breath; a song for slowing down.