(no subject)
saturday was my favorite day of the year: the st. paul's rummage sale!!! i spent about $35 and got a new bike, helmet, 45 books, several tapes/cds, and a bunch of junk that i don't really need or want but can never keep myself from buying anyway.
so i have begun to work on my fall reading list from my 45 new books, which is admittedly ambitious, but possible, and includes everything from barthes to borges to milosz to "teach yourself german" to a travel guide to ecuador and the galapogos. i am moving swiftly away from my summer reading, which consisted almost entirely of paul bowles novels, short story collections, and the tried-and-true children's lit that falls right into my patterns of nostalgia, drawing me to the library to pore over the same copies of the books i spent hours escaping into when i was younger. at the end of a tree grows in brooklyn (i'd forgotten how much i once loved that one), francie returns to her old library as an adult, asks the librarian to recommend a book for a little girl ("she is eleven"), and receives the same old book that had always been given to her as a child. it is strangely comforting to realize how little has changed here in the last 10-15 years; there are very few new books and all my old favorites are still on their shelves where they belong. nobody else ever seemed to care about those books like i did, but i wonder if there is another little girl on a fire escape reading them now.
last night i made a breakthrough at the ex show and i'm beginning to feel a bit more optimistic about my relationships in philadelphia right now as a result. there are still too many secrets though, and some days i just can't seem to make any progress at all.
so i have begun to work on my fall reading list from my 45 new books, which is admittedly ambitious, but possible, and includes everything from barthes to borges to milosz to "teach yourself german" to a travel guide to ecuador and the galapogos. i am moving swiftly away from my summer reading, which consisted almost entirely of paul bowles novels, short story collections, and the tried-and-true children's lit that falls right into my patterns of nostalgia, drawing me to the library to pore over the same copies of the books i spent hours escaping into when i was younger. at the end of a tree grows in brooklyn (i'd forgotten how much i once loved that one), francie returns to her old library as an adult, asks the librarian to recommend a book for a little girl ("she is eleven"), and receives the same old book that had always been given to her as a child. it is strangely comforting to realize how little has changed here in the last 10-15 years; there are very few new books and all my old favorites are still on their shelves where they belong. nobody else ever seemed to care about those books like i did, but i wonder if there is another little girl on a fire escape reading them now.
last night i made a breakthrough at the ex show and i'm beginning to feel a bit more optimistic about my relationships in philadelphia right now as a result. there are still too many secrets though, and some days i just can't seem to make any progress at all.