[update] interlude (of sorts);
I find it funny how I often the books that I stumble across in bargain bookstores turn out to be some of the ones that I really need to read at a particular time.
I remember, I found a copy of Under the Tuscan Sun in the Books for Less at the third floor of the RCBC Plaza. This was back when my department was still housed in that building.
I read that book over the course of two weeks (this was, mind you, a year before the subject of seeing a therapist ever came up) where I had begun to bring my fluffy white jacket to work -- not because it was cold, though it could get that way, but because I needed to somehow insulate myself from my surroundings.
I was stuck in the city that I loved but had suddenly begun to resent for its claustrophobic skyscrapers which let in too little of the sky. I remember this was about the time that I started speaking to some friends that I wanted to leave town, even for a little while, though the thought of leaving indefinitely was a constant presence at the back of my head.
Reading that book helped. Studying the writing and how storytelling was fused with facts from a person's life let me at least latch onto writing again, at least in my head. While I couldn't put fingers to keyboard or pen to paper, looking at the world with something like a narrative running through my head let me breathe.
A few weeks after that, I started scoring copies of the first four books of Diane Duane's Young Wizards Series at that little stall. Back when the lot of us were still in college, Hope coffeebased and Sammu alluriel would talk about that series a lot. My interest was peaked, though I'd never managed to get myself copies of the books for the shelf at home.
I'm glad I picked them up when I did. They're common ground for me and Neal, at least by way of books. I don't even bother to hide my smile when he ambles into my room to discretely pick them off my shelf. He rereads them a lot more than I do. He's at that age where he can't help but love going back and back again to the books that stick with him. It's a habit I wish I could do just as often as he does.
I remember telling him a few weeks back that I've glimpsed the rest of the books at FullyBooked High Street. The hopeful gleam in his eye has helped me make up my mind about collecting the rest.
While we haven't really spoken about what he loves about them, I figure when my schedule stops being screwy and I can hang with my baby brother again, it'll be great to hear what he has to say about Anita, Kit and the gang. If anything, that these books have given me an avenue to seamlessly spend a little more time getting to know Neal as he is now (snappy on the comeback, this one; makes me preen with pride) reminds me that there's a way back to feeling enthusiastic about the things one loves now matter how tired or burned out one can feel.
Its great no-charge therapy. It gives me something to hold on to and trust in.
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I found my copy of Runaway Horses in a bargain book stall. I'd gone down to buy a tetra pack of milk for my hot tea and ended up going back up to my floor with a plastic bag filled with books.
One day I'll get myself copies of the remaining three books from Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetralogy, but for now, that book is enough. I have to find time to sit down and read it again. Maybe I can even go over the paper I wrote on it after.
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Now that I think about it, a handful of the books on my shelf were all picked up on a whim at bargain bookstores. I have a bunch of YA novels (one Prachett in hardbound I nabbed for 150Php), and then there are the first two books by Lisa Carey, a favorite author of mine. My copy of Reading Lolita in Tehran was bought alongside Isabelle Allende's Portrait in Sepia.
Odd treasures one finds in bargain bookstores.
The books there catch your eye, tug at you to take them home. If I have cash to spare, I do just that. There was a time that I stumbled upon Sting's autobiography from the Books for Less that's in the SM Hypermart near where I live. Hardbound edition, displayed in the window. I passed it by.
When I saw the paperback in FullyBooked months afterward, I didn't even blink before picking it up and hauling over to the counter. It cost about three times as much as the one I saw in the Books for Less window, but hard lessons are learned that way: never turn your back on a book that you know, deep down, you want. Especially if it's at a price that is a total steal for something that looks like its in mint-condition. Someone else will pick it up if you don't.
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Now, I'm reading Charles de Lint's The Onion Girl.
I'm not sure if I can finish it the way I normally would a book between the training and exams I have to deal with this week. Part of me hopes that I won't. I think it would be a nice thing to take with me when I go with Mags badassbaby and Belle belledexxxx to Tagaytay on Friday even if I don't get read it up there.
I want it with me. I want to show it to my girls.
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It's a five-hundred-and-then-some-long read. Urban Fantasy, not sure if I can classify it as YA, though de Lint's books are often found in that section of the local bookstores. His heroine, Jilly, isn't a teenager anymore (I think) because from the first few chapters (they're really short), she sounds like someone in her early twenties to me. I guess I'll have to read more to know for sure.
Anyway, there's that bit on the twenty-sixth page that made me pause. It's relevant to me given that I have those odd days when I'm commuting to or from work or just walking down the street to take my lunch, and then my chest feels tight, my heart hard-pressed to breathe.
I know there are a handful of good friends on my flist who would echo the same sentiment, having dealt or are currently dealing with a similar thing; so here it is:
"You deserve better."
I shrug. I don't think the world works on merit. At least, not as much as we'd like it to.
"We'll find a way to beat it," Joe tells me.
And if we can't?
But I don't say the words aloud. I touch his hand.
"Don't you worry about me, Joe," I say. "I'm a survivor."
Then I let the pain reach across into the dreamlands and pull me back to that hospital bed. I hear his voice as I go, a faint sound, growing fainter.
"There's more to life than just surviving," he says.
I know that's true. But I also know that sometimes just surviving is all you get.