Today had some minor successes. I went into the Magus Books store and bought myself three books (believe it or not, only coming to $25!). I chose Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. About a month ago I bought Milan Kundera's Laughable Love. I am probably going to become Magus Books' regular customer, as I seem to have decided to begin to build the book collection of my dreams.
There is something to say about hardcover books. And not just the dime-a-dozen hardcover books you can buy anywhere, but the really beautiful hardcover books you'd find decades ago, with imprints and designs. Anna Karenina came in a wonderful green hard cover, with a protective sleeve whose inside is filled with a list of 365 other classic title. The other two books I found were, unfortunately, not hard cover, but they are beautiful nonetheless.
It's amazing how wonderful it is to be surrounded by books; I've always had a fondness for libraries, but the excitement of possible ownership of any book on any shelf is an entirely different experience (which is probably why I couldn't just stop at one book today).
And I have to say, the self-inflicted isolation is a marvelous break from reality; there is an immense burden that I've alleviated, and it actually allows me to reach out to people I run into much easier than before. I found that my choice to not talk to any friends or force contact with people has only led me to embrace the serendipitous occasions in which I run into someone -- today I found myself gushing to a girl I hadn't talked to since 10th grade. Without constantly checking my cell phone or keeping track of time or people, it's a wonderful release and an opportunity to just be out and about. I'm seriously considering deleting my Facebook and leaving my cell phone at home, and just to get rid of these socially intrusive tools that people use to excuse themselves from really caring about other people (while narcissistically forcing themselves on others with their frivolous status updates).
But at the same time I know that this type of social isolation isn't really a feasible reality. It's impossible to escape interacting with people; after all, I'm in this rat-race-of-a-world too.
Anyways, I am debating whether or not I want to use up another one of my 116 free breaks from this project. This Jamie Lidell album, Multiply, for all its merits, is hard for me to write about, and I don't feel like forcing myself to write something. I am pretty happy about the last two albums I reviewed, but I feel like my project is lacking in a more personal feel; if people were looking for music reviews, it would be more beneficial for them to look at Pitchfork or Popmatters.
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