How to Read a Book

by Monica Wood

On this first day in the lab of Mikhail Petrov, I don’t yet understand how special these birds are. How could I? What I do know is there is nowhere else I want to be right now, no person I would rather be than me. It’s been a long time since I felt this way, and the realization pours down, cool and refreshing, as I experience the watchful consideration of a scholarly African grey parrot. Even in retrospect, the moment shimmers.

We are a continuum of human experience, neither the worst nor the best thing we have ever done. Or, more exactly, we are both the best thing and the worst thing we’ve ever done. We are all of it, all at once, all the time.

reader reads the words. And the book, the unique and unrepeatable book, doesn’t exist until the given reader meets the writer on the page.”