Reading and resting

I'm afraid I'm out of the studio for another day or two. It's frustrating to find myself back in bed again, but it's only a stomach flu this time and will surely be over soon. Meanwhile, there are plenty of books to read, and the Faithful Hound cuddled beside me.

"Reading is a co-production between writer and reader," says Ben Okri. "The simplicity of this tool is astounding. So little, yet out of it whole worlds, eras, characters, continents, people never encountered before, people you wouldn���t care to sit next to in a train, people that don���t exist, places you���ve never visited, enigmatic fates, all come to life in the mind, painted into existence by the reader���s creative powers. In this way the creativity of the writer calls up the creativity of the reader. Reading is never passive."

''Beware of the stories you read or tell," he warns; "subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.''

The pictures today: reading and resting. Artists are identified in the picture captions.

The quotes by Ben Okri are from his essay collection A Way of Being Free (Phoenix, 1998); all rights reserved by the author.