Rules to Text By or Rules of Textual Engagement Looking at a text first, is a dead giveaway of interest. Let it look at you . Make that text feel that you are unattainable, that you are fulfilled and functional and happy without reading it. That you are perfectly capable of living with or without it. You are not an empty vessel waiting for that text to fill you up -- to entertain, illuminate or transport you. Remember it is YOU, the reader who will be giving that text life. You are alive and enthusiastic, engaged in deep socio-political post-industrial anti-consumerist aesthetics. You are a socially constructed compilation of multiple subjectivities aligned and soaring along shifting axes of influence / confluence. You do not need to intersect with that syntagmatic quagmire. So, to keep a text from getting too much too soon, don't read it more than once or twice a week for the first month or two. Let it think you have “other plans”, other things to read, to think about. Let it know that IT is not the only text or interest in your life. A reader must pace the relationship slowly. Don't expect the text to do this for you. I know how painful this can be. It's only natural that when you discover a text you like, that you connect with, you want to read it all the time. You want to know all about its history, its context, intentions, peruse its intertextual references. You want to know everything almost overnight. So, it's hard to say no when it beckons, calls out wanting you to read it. But you must put your foot down! Don't make it so easy. Texts love a readerly challenge. Be a challenge! Don't make the reading experience so easy and predictable that the text loses interest in having you. Be distant and unobtainable. Elusive. For, that text will lose interest if you pursue it . It may seem cruel and impossible, but you must be determined. When the urge to read comes, read something else. Call a friend, book a tour, write a poem, go to a reading. If that text is lucky, you will eventually reveal all your secrets, mysteries to it. A little at a time.                                            For goodness sake, you are not an open book So, don't be too revealing. Unveil yourself a little at a time: reading it letter by letter, line by line, savoring each sonoric cluster, stanza. Read it perhaps only once a week at first.   And after you become ever so passionately engaged with every curve, e very line, every orthographic homage, each syntactic moment, tell that text – “I'm sorry, I already have plans”, next time it wants you to read it.             Even if you feel intoxicated by the smell of its print, the thickness of its paper, the smell of it on your fingers, in your nose, tell that text, “I'm sorry, my reading itinerary DOES NOT INCLUDE YOU”. It's common knowledge that texts want as much as they can get on a first reading. It's your job to slow down this process. Let the text discover you. Your analytic quirks, intra-semiotic idiosyncracies. Let it want what you have to bring to it. So, do not give it all away too soon. Do not let that text think you exclusively belong to it . Pace yourself. For this text may be dangerous. Full of unwanted dis-ease, slippage. It may ooze textosterone, and be disastrously unfaithful. It may impact you for life. So, take it slow and deny it full pleasure. Even if you feel the text is frustrated, angry, REMEMBER that anger indicates interest. Don't be surprised if that text calls out to you in your sleep, in dreams – if it calls to you the next morning or when you are reading other texts, or during sweaty discourse. When you finally agree to immerse yourself in it, explore that text like uncharted territory. Read it like you've never read before. Read it with verve, with passion. Insert yourself IN IT. Engage with every aspect of its teleology, its material make-up and the foundations of its thinking systems, codes, queries Let it swirl through you and caress each mnematic moment of never ending possibility with no assumptions of Truth, Authenticity or Closure. Be gentle AND be rough. Let it do things to you as you do things to it. Simultaneously enter its paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes. With your mouth, gently caress its traces, entrances, complexities and travel with it through sonoric and material exuberance. Let it resonate with you. Make it scream. And after, be casual and unmoved by the fact that that chapter or stanza is over. With that attitude, chances are that text will be clinging to you. Don't try to keep it with you by suggesting you can penetrate it deeper that you alone are able to unpack its intricately woven complex references when you read it in bed. In fact don't spend all your time with your text in bed. Take it out. Hold it close in your pocket or between your inner thighs. Rub its spine. Embrace it with you fingers or under your arm. Make it ache for you. BUT, DO NOT READ IT. Do not seem anxious. Remember, you are in control of your own textacy But, if you absolutely can not take it, if your patience gets the better of you, if you need to just hear its voice, Read a little then close it. Do not let the text think that just because you HAVE your text, you will READ it too. Remember, it is you who can take that text to new heights. THE TEXT NEEDS YOU. I suggest you take that text to the beach or on an airplane – or if you want to really keep that text guessing, take it to a book party, a library, a bookstore. Take it into a classroom where other texts are being celebrated. Show that text it's not the only text in town. Watch its pages crumple. Turn inward. Remind it, at any time, it could be REMAINDERED manhandled, manipulated and marked down It could be marginalized. Used. sold back or burned. However, when you eventually make the decision to read the text fully, you may discover certain flaws – find things about it you wish were different. It may not be as playful as you may have wanted. It may be too full of assonance or its harsh juxtapositions or collisions may irritate you. Perhaps you will find its margins too wide or its lexicon unwieldy. Perhaps its ambiguous nature will seem unsatisfying, or its ellipses artificially plumped up. But, you must decide if you can accept these flaws and work WITH them. Can you indeed live with them? Texts don't change but readers do. And remember, the text is not looking for just a light reading but a REAL reader, a CLOSE reader, a reader that will make it feel ALIVE. For goodness sake, the text is not just after A ONE NIGHT SCAN The text wants something real. Lasting. That only YOU can offer. The text knows that you are able to offer it a fully metonymous relationship. The text knows that this is for real. For life.