Life is hard. Here is someone.: White Boys

Well, exactly…

This one made me smile. Think of the small collection of books on my shelves that I love nearly as much as the favorites I found on my own. Or more, maybe, for divergent reasons.

Made me think of the lasting thrill of this biographical bibliography…these books sent to me by men outraged I hadn’t read them already.  Borrowed in relationships they outlasted or mentioned casually by boys and women I wanted to catch up to. Bought years ago to impress or emulate the professors who spoke of them in reverent voices, more sophisticated friends, the small group of personalities I wanted to grow in to before I found something else to be.

The songs or cities that can keep a time frozen and captured - fresh - are so much in their own right. But these books, they are more than that even. I don’t know…they’re monuments among the current clutter. Some portrait from the past unnoticed by every guest, bearers of inscriptions and souvenir bookmarks, filled with the sentences you underlined in weighted pencils, the corners you turned down and creased hard so as not to be lost. All these concepts and lines put just so, that you never got over. All yours to hoard or pass on to the next one you love. A field guide through the years. Or maybe it’s that they were the decoder ring? The evidence that convinced there was something in this person to love; even if it was wise not to expect forever. That there was something in your own self admirable and smart enough to resonate with these words passed on like history.

I could listen to these book stories all day.

(via beenthinking)