SOME NOTES ON MIAMI INT'L BOOK FAIR

Some bad habits never die, especially those from which good things come.

Sitting was my favorite reading stance, the only difference from the rest of the world's was that it had to be on the floor. From childhood to adulthood, in school or at home, the best way for me to grasp the beauty and value of text was through a coordination between my brain and my ass: I just have to slump on the floor.

From the floor of schoolbuildings' lobbies I reviewed for exams. I read my comicbooks as a kid in lotus position, completely unmindful of the coldness of tiles. My mother's inquest why the butt part of my jeans were constantly filthy fell on deaf ears; I only listened to what my reading habits told me.

Then about three years ago, while seated on the carpet at home and, yes, reading a book, I felt a numbness on my lower back shooting down to my legs. Horrors, I could not even stand! That was when I came to know of what my books did to my back.

I never did sit on the floor to read after that, but I never got to read as fast and as engaged after that, as a result. Lying in bed, or sitting on a chair, I would feel bored after reading 10 pages or so.

At the bookfair in downtown Miami last month, I was in line to wait for the 1:30 pm lecture of Russell Banks at the auditorium of Miami-Dade College's main building. I was actually sitting on a folding chair, like a few others, because the wait was something like an hour. Then a woman with a cane passed by and I offered her my chair. She held my face with both hands and for a while I thought she was going to bite my nose (a la Hannibal the Cannibal), and she said under her breath, I didn't know there is still a gentleman in this world.

So I was left standing, holding a bagful of books that I acquired from different booths earlier that day: Seeing (Jose Saramago); Everyman (Philip Roth); Voices of Time (Eduardo Galeano); Travels from the Scriptorium (Paul Auster), and about ten journals from different small presses including a free copy from PEN America. (ACLU also gave me a free copy, my first, of the US Constitution).

Then a thought came to me. I grabbed a book at random (Auster's), sat on the floor, and began to read. Where else can a symbolical reunion with an old habit of reading a book on the floor be better experienced than in a book fair, while waiting to listen to the speech of a revered writer. Just as soon as my butt touched the floor a whiff of freshness seeped through my brain. When I opened Auster's book and started to read, I was like a baby going back to the safety of my mother's womb...

Auster's narrator says something like, A picture does not lie but it does not tell the whole story either. Reading that I took a picture of myself sitting on that floor with my bounty. The picture indeed shows the truth I was a happy doggy.

Of course it did not capture the truth after that either. When the usher announced it was time to enter the suditorium, I had a freakin' awful time standing up.