Chapter 21

One day some months later Roger sat at his desk and wondered whether one would do himself a greater service by writing or by reading. Indeed, there are a great many books, reams of them, with literal tons of insightful, and wonderful, and enchanting, and hypnotic information -- but, he reasoned, the mind itself also boasts a wealth of such thoughts and memories.

After a couple of hours of comparing the pros and cons, he eventually concluded (if ever such a question could truly be concluded) that the two exercises would serve differing purposes and were, perhaps, equal in merit.

Roger wrote with great frequency. He wrote of his past and his future, speculatively. He wrote of his memories and wrote letters to the memories from those memories. He wrote work documents but those were worthless. Not worthless, of course -- his company paid him reasonably well for them -- but worthless in a non-monetary sense. He wrote checks on occasion, though it seemed the time for this style of transfer had passed.

In the times when he was not working or writing or watching ESPN, Roger would read. The list of books he had read was not short, though he complacently admitted to himself that the list of those he should read was probably longer. He read The Bible and 'A Tale of Two Cities', but also the Qur'an and 'The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster'. Roger had no real intention to re-read any of his books, but did not sell, gift, nor donate them away.

In Roger's mind, there were several things preferable to reading a good book -- but reading was far more accessible in terms of ease and cost, and sometimes it proved rather enjoyable.