Baseball
It’s been years since I’ve wandered aimlessly around a used bookstore. The realization came, predictably enough, while I was wandering aimlessly around a used bookstore.
It’s a small one, not too far from work and even closer to the place with the hot chocolate. Only three years ago I would often wander around the used bookstore in Mountain View convinced that if I just owned enough books - enough in total, enough in each category - I would know everything I need to know. If I just had Beginning Spanish and Fitness for Dummies and the collected works of Mark Twain, I’d speak Spanish and go to the gym and be witty.
Now I’m selling all my books, trying to own as few as possible. I don’t quite know what that means. Nevertheless, I found myself in the bookstore remembering how it feels to be there. Scanning shelves of well-worn books until something catches the eye -- a familiar name, a funny title. It’s the most relaxing kind of paying attention.
Something did catch my eye. A boring-looking paperback with a baseball player on the cover. I don’t like baseball and don’t know the author, but the book was instantly familiar. I’ve owned it. For a decade, no less. At some point in my childhood I got it; maybe from a free box somewhere or the school library that was always trying to get rid of old books.
I eagerly sank into it, looking for familiar words, looking to be transported into the past. But something went wrong. I had too much reference. I’ve now heard of Joe DiMaggio and I knew what it meant when it described Boston as a town mad for baseball. I understood the big words. It didn’t transport me anywhere. It might as well have been a different book. For all I remember it, it is a different book.
I didn’t buy it. Instead, I walked away wondering what’s changed. Why I don’t remember it, why I don’t want to read it. I was no more interested in baseball when I was younger but now the time to read it is somehow more valuable, somehow not worth it. Why did reading a book I only half understood about a subject I don’t care about make sense when I was eleven but not nowadays when I might actually get it? I don’t think it’s about having a job or the ability to buy other books or even having a more clear set of preferences. It’s about curiosity I no longer have.
At least I’m going to go back to the bookstore. After all, I only got to the Bs.
It’s a small one, not too far from work and even closer to the place with the hot chocolate. Only three years ago I would often wander around the used bookstore in Mountain View convinced that if I just owned enough books - enough in total, enough in each category - I would know everything I need to know. If I just had Beginning Spanish and Fitness for Dummies and the collected works of Mark Twain, I’d speak Spanish and go to the gym and be witty.
Now I’m selling all my books, trying to own as few as possible. I don’t quite know what that means. Nevertheless, I found myself in the bookstore remembering how it feels to be there. Scanning shelves of well-worn books until something catches the eye -- a familiar name, a funny title. It’s the most relaxing kind of paying attention.
Something did catch my eye. A boring-looking paperback with a baseball player on the cover. I don’t like baseball and don’t know the author, but the book was instantly familiar. I’ve owned it. For a decade, no less. At some point in my childhood I got it; maybe from a free box somewhere or the school library that was always trying to get rid of old books.
I eagerly sank into it, looking for familiar words, looking to be transported into the past. But something went wrong. I had too much reference. I’ve now heard of Joe DiMaggio and I knew what it meant when it described Boston as a town mad for baseball. I understood the big words. It didn’t transport me anywhere. It might as well have been a different book. For all I remember it, it is a different book.
I didn’t buy it. Instead, I walked away wondering what’s changed. Why I don’t remember it, why I don’t want to read it. I was no more interested in baseball when I was younger but now the time to read it is somehow more valuable, somehow not worth it. Why did reading a book I only half understood about a subject I don’t care about make sense when I was eleven but not nowadays when I might actually get it? I don’t think it’s about having a job or the ability to buy other books or even having a more clear set of preferences. It’s about curiosity I no longer have.
At least I’m going to go back to the bookstore. After all, I only got to the Bs.