A Man Who Reads

The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.

~ Katherine Mansfield (1888 - 1923)

I was fifteen, about to travel to a faraway country. The moment I stepped on the airplane, I saw a man sitting in a front row seat, already deep into a book. People were streaming into the plane, loudly chattering. The supposedly soft ambience music was drowned by the commotion of rowdy kids, crying babies, men and women alike making strange noises while struggling with luggage, flight attendants trying to find everyone their seats while keeping their smiles intact.  And then there was this man. Holding a thick book. Eyes on the page. Unfazed. 

It was the closest thing to Zen that I had ever encountered, although at the time I didn't know the word "Zen" existed. Instead I knew chaos, had always known it since childhood, it was forever inside my head. I had been trying to banish them with no avail. I knew books, had always read them since childhood, and I knew how they can help me shut the world around me. It just that seeing it reflected back at me, in that confined space, as an image of a man reading quietly, that I was reminded profoundly how powerful an antidote books were to the whirlwind of life.

The image never left me, but I never revisited it until I met you. Seeing how easily you slipped away and into a book, even in a noisy public place, I often thought to myself: did I somehow manifest you into my life? Did a super-intelligence being take pity on my chaotic mind and decide to send you to me, so that I could model after you?

It has been 35 years since that time in the airplane. I can't believe my luck: I get to live with a man who reads, and gets comforted everyday by the sight of him reading.