Arr...I'm a Bookaneer

Not everyone knows this, but only approximately 0.01% of books are made to be bought and set on a shelf. Only a very certain type of book deserves to stay with you forever, only the one that you can truly read over and over again, with notes scribbled in the margins and dog-eared pages and covers worn ragged by travel and love. The rest are to be passed along to friends.

What is a book? It’s a collection of ideas. And ideas are nothing if you don’t share them with at least one other person, and trust that they’ll share it with another, and trust that at some point those ideas will get caught up in the web of human of interaction, passed round and round until they are accepted as truth.

Fiction pieces aren’t stories. They’re thesis papers. They’re philosophies. Someone wrote that plot and developed that character in order to lead you through a specific train of thought, in order to make you understand what they think. They just happened to choose to present it in a medium slightly less dry than Plato’s works. NOT that they’re not also fantastic in their own right…

Why the book musings? I just finished a good one today—the kind of book that’s so good, you get unstuck in time, concerned with nothing but soaking up every nuance of the piece until…wow, it’s 10 o’ clock and you haven’t gotten off the couch since you finished your homework and ate dinner. It was called The God of Animals and it (teenage reading euphemism in 3…2…) really put my life in perspective.

And in case you’re wondering…I will be passing it on. This one has already made the rounds through my family and will now be introduced to a teacher…hopefully to be passed along once again.

Just For Now...

For two hours today--two full hours--I was allowed to be perfectly still as the world spun around me. As people outside the window ran to catch buses and sped to beat rush hour, as they made phone calls and sent emails and broadcasted news reports, I sat. With one person. And talked. And sometimes didn't even talk, just listened or felt or took another long sip of agave-sweetened coffee. I let the curls be pulled from my hair, let words and laughs and sighs escape uninhibited, let my feet dangle over the edge of a leather armrest clearly not meant for feet, yet so conducive to lounging...and as I became conscious of exactly how much I was letting go, I began to feel like I was exhaling for the first time in months.

That's right. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I HAVE time--it could be attributed to the return of Senior Privilege, the fact that I'm starting to feel in control of my schedule overall, and/or the fact that the scheduling nirvana that is Ghana (gotta love the equatorial pace) looms ever nearer. Finally I feel like I have time to write again, time to work but also time to reflect, relax...and respire, for god's sake.

So as senior year comes to a close, expect THIS to start occurring regularly again--posting, I mean. I'm feeling renewed and ready to give this another go.