Don't worry about dropping your head, it's your chest

Ahh, the always welcome sense of relief when the semester is truly and finally over. I just submitted my last final, sociology 4150, and am enjoying a detox fiction book like I always have to read at the end. This semester? Tolstoy Lied by Rachel Kadish. Interestingly enough, both Villi and I spotted and bought this book in separate trips to Barnes and Noble. She mentioned that it looked familiar and when I went to place it on the shelf, it was already there.

I noticed today, for some reason, that I don’t write in margins of books, I only dog-ear. I have come up with some possible reasons for this.

1. Fear – I was/am afraid that putting my words and thoughts next to those of a published author is rude or offensive. Disturbing because it indicates that my fear of offending extends to inanimate objects in my possession. Do I believe that Douglas Coupland’s car might break down in front of my house, he’d ask to borrow the phone, flip through my worn copy of Microserfs, and mock my reactions?

2. Dirty Dancing – Robby’s character wants to lend Baby his copy of Atlas Shrugged, after telling her that “some people matter and some people don’t.” He tells her she will like it but to return it because he has notes in the margin. Did my young, unconscious self equate writing in margins to being a douchebag? Disturbing because it indicates that pop culture is even more internalized than I thought.

3. Surprise – Part of me likes going back into a book with no specific memory. Reading it from whatever new vantage point I have climbed to since I last read it. Maybe the margin writing distracts from new magic in the book? Disturbing because this points more to my own fear of finding myself stupid on the return trip.

4. No pencil – self-explanatory.

This is the line from Tolstoy Lied that made me want to post something.

“Sitting here beside him, sipping room-temperature beer, I feel: This place is the center. This sofa is the exact center of the known universe, all neighboring systems quietly reshaping to make way for the heavy pull between us.”