"Focus! Focus!"

I have made it clear, I would imagine, that one of my many faults is an inability to stay focused on a single thing. That was at the heart of my long absence from swimming. It touches on other areas of trouble as well. Before writing this, I was watching a DVD. The idea to write this post came while I was trying to follow the plot of the movie, and that effort was partly in vain as the post proceeded to largely write itself in my mind, which wandered from the leisurely activity at hand. Over and over, I cursed the invisible hand wresting control of my mind's tiller away from me, but to no avail. It was through only a Herculean effort that I was able to keep touch with mental terra firma and enjoy the movie.

I get the understanding more and more that I'm seen as something of a walking Wikipedia with a gift for vocabulary. It all comes from media such as the movie I just watched, or the book of poetry I'm currently reading. The people with whom I have this reputation would probably think that I effortlessly churn through such things as I do the oxygen in the air. I certainly go through them fast enough that they could be excused for being mistaken on that score. In truth, it's significantly harder for me than it is for some. It's that bugaboo of focus. As I sit down to watch a movie, I'm moored to the moment like a hot air balloon, but the ties are tenuous. In one moment, I'm right there with the movie. In the next moment, I'm aware of the movie, but also of an extraneous thought which may or may not have been sparked by the film. The moment after that, the ties have been severed, and I've already been taken miles away by air currents.

It's a similar thing when I'm reading, especially considering that most of my reading is done when I'm out and about traveling on public transportation. Villainous external stimuli of all senses pummels me mercilessly from all angles. I read the same passages over and over, straining to discern meaning through the noise which permeates. Some reading is easier for me than others. I could fly through something like Tom Clancy. The stuff I gravitate towards, like the book of Keats I have out at the moment, requires me to slog through like so much rhyming swamp. It sometimes has me feeling like I'm a boxer fighting several weight classes too high.

I guess perhaps I still come out ahead of many who are somewhat less equipped to understand the things I read, all things considered. There are factors in my favor to partly balance out the impairments, my intelligence being one and my great enthusiasm being another. I would nonetheless kill for the ability to stay in the moment word after word, stanza after stanza (or scene after scene, act after act as the case may be) as I read the way I imagine they mostly would if handed the same material. Understanding might not follow, but their journey through the book would include less backtracking. I do my best, and I suppose the results cannot be faulted very severely.