Reading under the Peat Moss

The relaxing comforts of a good audiobook is an underrated joy. When engaging in the slow activity that is reading, it's easy to forget the atmosphere. Finding a proper place to read is as important as doing the same for studying. However, there's a difference between the two, a big difference. Studying for an exam is a focused task, something that requires a quiet room, few things in it to distract, and few features in it to enrich your mind in what is not the test material. A sterile place I wish to not return. My exposure to it is why I recognize the value of books, especially ones to be consumed audibly.

I can't think of a more satisfying memory than sitting in a swinging chair outside my Florida apartment. On this day the wind brushed past me in perfect intervals, not too hot, not too cold, and not too hard. This is a rare occurrence in the state's often brutal heat. I recall listening to Dave Grohl's autobiography. It was nothing special, but something about that afternoon drew me in. Motel style buildings surrounded me. Each one had three stories and were colored yellow, green, and blue in succession.

My eyes focused on an unfinished paint spot when Grohl came through the headphones in his somber musings. He was backing out of joining his local band Scream. A while later he'd returned to them during a gig and taken their offer. My gaze shifted to the yellow foam sticking out of the wall on a higher story. He'd started touring, putting around the U.S in a congested van. The thing looked and smelled like sweaty hard bunks in my head.

Dave left his old band, eventually. It came in a phone call inside a sinking California house. Nirvana offered him to be their drummer. The rest is history from there. I lay on my back looking up at the large trees. They smelled like harsh rotting sap and shed their leaves before the clear sky. Kurt Cobain had passed away. The chair rocked me back and forth as two squirrels climbed up the trunk of a nearby tree. Peat moss brushed its bark as I continued to look up. Grohl went on about the losses he'd experienced throughout his life. I almost choked up, which is rare for me.

There was something about that day. A flow. Something that put me into full focus. Moments like that come out of nothing. They turn into a satisfying rhythm, like a song I know will play on the radio. Every movement of the eyes, hands, and body has meaning, every word coming to my ears, every lizard that crawls up the chair, every moss strand that waves in the wind. They are all messengers with their cryptic directions telling me things only I can decipher, or try to at least.

All I can do is sit back and listen. Have my gaze travel undulate on the painted stories though the chapters of a man's ups and downs. There's nothing better to do than savor the now, and savor it intently. The outdoors is like that sometimes, more engaging than a wall, but not distracting. Its goings and comings move with the words. I was watching the mundane go by and it was gorgeous.