been thinking...

In college I remember the man I was in love with loved this book, and also Cormac McCarthy, and I resolved to not read either. He found it first. He told me a line from the book in key moments in our relationship, “Do not advance the action toward a plan,” he recited. I rolled my eyes. He left school without saying goodbye, moved to New Zealand and then China, where he still is. I can’t wait to talk to him about this book—maybe he will read this in Google Buzz since Tumblr is blocked there.

I read this book because I saw it on one boy’s bookshelf, and another boy had told me he had carried much of what was important to him from this book. When I told him I was reading it he texted me, “I die first.”

I told the person I was stupidly in love with for a very long time that I was reading it and when I showed it to him we both hugged it and yelled about it in a loud bar.

It reads like a character study in everyone I’ve admired from some shifting, incalculable distance.

“
—

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.
Reblogged 1 year ago from meaghano
61 notes
  1. cerahopsun reblogged this from meaghano and added:
    Welp, guess I’m...thought, “Should...or shouldn’t I?”...
  2. kristincarroll reblogged this from meaghano and added:
    Ironically (or maybe not-so-much),...knew in college (/was not-so-secretly in love with)...
  3. whitnic reblogged this from beenthinking
  4. beenthinking reblogged this from meaghano and added:
    Life is hard. Here is someone.: White Boys Well, exactly… This one made me smile. Think
  5. ericbrowntown reblogged this from meganwest and added:
    yeah, the family is dying
  6. meganwest reblogged this from meaghano
  7. luckypaperstars said: I also cried at White Noise (and I also read it because of boys, or one boy).
  8. theknifebusiness said: White Noise was an underwhelming book with an outdated message and gimmicky prose. But if you cried, maybe it was good for you. I bet it’d be interesting talking about books with you.