Echoless footsteps on a gravel path

Used books are great. Particularly, they are great for specific "things," i.e.

• Being cheaper than new books
• Falling the fuck apart while reading them
• Waking you up, due to pages 41-180 falling all over the floor, when you have started nodding off for the third time that afternoon because you've slept like dick for 9 (and/or a billion-million) consecutive nights, largely because you've decided that drinking on weeknights is a bad idea (it isn't) and that you shouldn't go to bed drunk (you should) as often as you had been last month for whatever reason ("growing up," and/or your dreams being crushed like small bugs by an obnoxious, boogery child on blacktop outlined for playing Foursquare)

While the beauty of Combray is, without doubt, as certain and true as the beauty of Proust's prose, neither one has been able to keep me from falling asleep in all manner of uncomfortable positions, assumed in order to prevent myself from falling asleep, in the past two days. This is largely due to my insistence upon beginning this project during a week where I have had to work exactly double the amount of hours as usual, with a few unexpected morning shifts that have insidiously robbed me of that blessed last hour of sleep. -  (Note: that was a bullshit excuse) - That final, vital hour that seems to matter more than the seven (yes, I get 8 hours of sleep quite often...! Or when not "sleeping like dick" as per above) prior to it despite the small volume of dreams it holds compared to its numerous siblings in the night.

Of course, my inability to stay awake while reading one of the foremost works of literary art is no reflection on the writing, as a customer at work suggested today in the elevator, but is rather a reflection of my own inadequacies. This is not meant in a, "Oh, I'm no good!" kind of way, but in a manner that expresses what I believe to be a deep-seated, cultural issue in the modern west. Insomuch as...

I could sit on my couch for, as I mentioned yesterday, about five hours while switching back and forth between my iPhone, my computer, and a pair of drum sticks with which I am pounding obnoxious, rudimentary patterns to a metronome on the surface of the antique trunk full of blankets I use as a coffee table. I cannot, however, focus on reading one hundred pages of what is arguably the greatest literary offering by any single man in Western history in about half that amount of time.

I'm great. I'm entranced by meaningless tripe (Instagram? Even the word sounds stupid- think about what it is for more than thirty consecutive seconds and smoke will likely pour from your ears as the futility of your entire modern existence crashes into the pocket-size display that has usurped the throne of culture from art and creations of true intention with mindless, easy-bake photos and personal overshares from people obsessed with their cats [me] or the horrific atrocities they conjured up in their kitchens after a few hearty joints and a couple of stiff drinks) that offers absolutely minus-sub-zero when it comes to intellectual or emotional sustenance. 

But can it ever hold my attention. Sorry, M. Swann. Maybe if you were 3.5" and backlit, I'd be able to pay better attention.

We're all great. Goddamn it.