© 2011 Iskra Johnson    cellphone photo

The first Wednesday in January the airwaves teemed with cold rain, falling blackbirds, stunned bats, biblical floods, the apocalypse of the bumblebee and, courtesy of Amy Goodman, a special on the health hazards of solitary confinement. It seemed like a perfect evening to check in for Silent Reading at the Sorrento Hotel. What better antidote to the Really Terrible News than the Fireside Room, with Chopin on the grand piano, and the civilized whispers of page-turning multitudes?

It was sitting room only, and I got the last seat, a simple gray silk stripe. I coveted my neighbors’ chairs, tall Alice in Wonderland affairs of pink and burgundy brocade proportioned such that the reader’s head becomes about the size of a lower case p. For reading, the sitting situation is very important. It becomes the boundary edge of the world into which you attempt to sink, the perimeter of focus. This evening's immediate situation included five other women and a glossy wooden table on which perched several ruby Manhattans and a teapot. The dreamy and smiling brunette read Celine, the luminous blonde boned up on the taxonomy of thalides, the extremely silent woman read Northwest Poetry Review, and the resolutely humorless girl with glasses read White Like Me. I read a story about a woman who kills a bear to save her husband, and my companion, the writer Jennifer Manlowe, brooded over her missing knitting. As she had crossed the street to the Sorrento her yarn fell from her bag and a fast-moving truck caught it, pulling needles and unfinished sweater-neck far down the highway. After the requisite period of mourning she accepted a temporary loan of Tinkers by Paul Harding.

It really is a very peculiar thing to do, to read silently with others on purpose in public outside of a library or an institution of higher learning. Everyone looked good, and you don’t usually think about this under fluorescent lights, you just want to leave as soon as possible or lay your head into the middle of the book and go to sleep. In strategizing over the future of the book, perhaps we should consider the usefulness of mood lighting and the elixir of vanity. A person just looks better reading a book than they do with blue computer haze reflecting on their face. The books themselves look better in the Fireside room than they do pretty much anywhere else. As a designer of custom typography for book jackets I’d say looks do matter. I am not entirely sure about the Chopin, inspite of the beauty of Kyle O'Quin's playing. I am someone who jumps up if classical music is playing and turns it off at the crescendos. I like serious silence, with maybe wind or birds. Later in the year I’ll write about silent reading in the garden, assuming the birds go back up in the sky and enough bumblebees come by to pollinate hope. If anyone launches new Silent Reading events, in Staten Island steak houses or Burien noodle shops or even on long elevator rides, please send pictures and invite the rest of us.

© Jennifer Manlowe   cellphone photo