I want to become a sponge!

Going to the movies is a strange experience for me these days akin to being kept in solitary at Abu Ghraib. Sensory deprivation is the order of the day.

Firstly, the trials and tribulations my poor Alma has to go through just to get me to a seat that doesn't already have a 300-pound Jabba-the-fat creature sitting in it. I have to sit right in the back row to make any sense of the screen at all and if you could watch me climb around in the dark you would see me as some mad character from Hansel and Gretal leaving a thick trail of popcorn from the door to my seat.

After sitting in Jabba's crotch I find myself looking at a giant white blur a.k.a "the screen". My visual field is the size of a plum and in order to follow a film my eyes have to dart all over the place trying to keep up with the action. 15 minutes into any film, even a great one, I get tired of all the darting around and settle on one part of the screen thereby missing half of what's going on. It's not too comforting to know that my plum is slowly turning into a grape.

It was for these reasons that I stopped going to the movies for a year or two but recently I've had a change of heart. I've come to realise that my disabilities are taking things that I enjoy away from me as it is, there is no reason for me to prematurely add to that pile of debris. A pile that incidentally includes: driving, night-clubs, dark bars, meandering through the city, and some types of theater.

When I came to this realisation a few weeks ago I knew that I wanted to apply this to all kinds of media that I may have a limited time with. Alma and I have been to the movies once a week since, I have two books on the go at any one time and I am looking to absorb as many stories and images as I can in the next few years.