Marking Time Through BooksI've been sick with a nasty cold for the past day, lying in bed hacking and blowing my nose. So lots of time to stare into space while feeling miserable. As I've been doing this it was hard not to notice the pile of books next to my bed and think about them as markings of time and interest ... reading Jhumpa Lahiri's Namesake last spring not long after returning from India; Kracauer's The Mass Ornament, a number of essays from Art In Theory 1900 - 1990, and Huysman's Against Nature while I was working on Sunset; Pema Chodron's When Things Fall Apart while I had terrible insomnia for several months; A Child's Bible while I was working on Logos (still not complete); Dylan's Chronicles also while I had insomnia and found myself drifting back in time, thinking about my life in Oregon; Mikal Gilmore's Shot In the Heart which was recommended to me by my sweetie Corey not long after we'd been seeing each other. He thought I'd find it interesting because of the Mormon connection and other related content (he was right); Iceberg Slim's Pimp, also given to me by Corey, which was given to him by Chris Rock (Corey works on the show Everyone Hates Chris) who said "Everything you need to know about life is in this book" - how could I not be intrigued. And Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, which I think felt the closest to my heart. I've been reading Didion for many years - actually only her essays, I haven't read any of her novels. So it's been a lot like reading her journal over the course of her life. Anyway, very touching - and part of what struck me as the marking of time while staring into space at the books next to my bed.
