At first, she had it all under control. Drops of blood spoke to her from the floor, and mice overthrew foxes. She consumed and was happy.

Knowing the difference between trolls and gnomes, she moved on to murder mysteries. At this point, she liked words well enough but didnt let them slow her down. Even in the Tolkein days of grade school the poetry of it did not get her.

She got as far as Tess of the D'Urbervilles before the words hit her. Relative clauses came in different flavors, and bore myriad relationships to the parent clause; positional ambiguity fed the streams of meaning. Each clause and each bit of clause had its own contribution that demanded special attention. The longer the sentence, the more permutations. By the time she finished all the phrases in one clause, she had to memorize the entire set for the journey to the predicate. After delving through the second set of layers, she had to reread the first. The leaves arent worth anything if you forget the forest.

Curious at first, it became painful. She began to have ideas of what language was for, and couldnt get past page one. Each cluster of words was a lover that hated to leave. Philosophy books were drugs that she knew she could never escape from. She barely tolerated the sparest historical accounts. Bare feet ran over rocky sand. She emerged from a reading weary and beaten.

Nearly broken, she discovered poetry. William Carlos Williams saved her life.
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