I always made an unexamined assumption that I was like Writers. I must be like them... because I read so much! But reading about writing is causing me to think that writing is different from reading and that writers are acutally totally different from readers. I wish that reading and writing were the same thing-- as interchangeable as breathes: breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, breathing out. And that I could switch from one to the other just as effortlessly. Of course there is a component missing from reading and writing which completes the triad... and that is "thinking". But reading, writing, and thinking do not divide so nicely into the dual nature of breathing. If thinking were to fit into the schema, it would be the hesitation between breaths-- because thought is inaction, and eventually we must stop thinking so that we will not suffocate and die.

I am very pleased with this metaphor.