oh Powell's books...you win my heart every time

I was downtown this morning running some errands in the Pearl district and couldn’t stop myself from wandering into Powell’s Books AKA heaven. It’s a whole city block worth of books, several floors, levels, color coded rooms-thousands and thousands of books. I love going in there. The downfall, I always buy something regardless of how bleak my current financial situation is and somehow hours pass as I wander through the rooms, picking up random books and reading excerpts from every book I fancy. I get lost in the world of books. I think in another life I would be someone who holes up to read in a big sunny chair all day every day. My current reading habits are more along the lines of reading four or five books at any given time and sometimes finishing them months of years later. It’s not an effective process in slightest, but it’s the truth.

At one point I think I was holding a stack of ten books. I don’t have money for ten books, so I plopped down on the hardwood floor to read some more excerpts and narrow it down. I ended up buying On the Road by Jack Kerouac and The Inner Voice of Love by Henri Nouwen. Here are the excerpts that sealed the deal for me.

From Kerouac,

“He was simply a youth tremendously excited with life, and though he was a con-man, he was only conning because he wanted so much to live and to get involved with people who would otherwise pay no attention to him. He was conning me and I knew it, and he knew I knew, but I didn’t care and we got along fine- no pestering, no catering; we tiptoed around each other like heartbreaking new friends.”

“Marylou was a pretty blonde with immense ringlets of hair like a sea of golden tresses; she sat there on the edge of the couch with her hands hanging in her lap and her smoky blue country eyes fixed in a wide stare”

(This is one of my favorite quotes-however; I didn’t know it was from this book until I read it on the pages.)

“Then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’”

And from Nouwen,

“Love Deeply. Do not hesitate to love and to love deeply. You might be afraid of the pain that deep love can cause. When those you love deeply reject you, leave you, or die. Your heart will be broken. But that should not hold you back from loving deeply. The pain the comes from deep love makes your love ever more fruitful. It is like a plow that breaks the ground to allow the seed to take root and grow into a strong plant. Every time you experience the pain of rejection, absence, or death, you are faced with a choice. You can become bitter and decide not to love again, or you can stand straight in your pain and let the soil on which you stand become richer and more able to give life to new seeds.”

Good words, good words. Now if I could pull myself away from reading these new treasures and start reading my textbooks for school, I’ll be back in business.