A Piece Of You

If you want to know who someone really is read their books!

Well, not really their books, although if they do write this is a great way to gain some insight into how they think, what they want the world to think, maybe even how they want to be perceived. I am thinking more of the books they read.

What feeds their mind? What tickles their imagination? What do they turn to when they want to kick back and relax? Where do they go when they need to be fed?

Some people do write like they really feel and think, but I think most of us have a retaining wall built in there somewhere that acts like a safety net, or filter, protecting our inner selves from the rest of the world. Poetry and songs might let the world closer, but there is still the thought, that others are going to hear what I write, say, sing.

The books I read are like mile markers, unchanging ideas and words, thoughts etched in black and white. I may not subscribe to them in this moment, but at some period in time they were close enough that I read them. Now, only the scent lingers, or the passing memory of a word in one paragraph on a single page, but somewhere inside of me that book still exists. It rubbed against me and I am marked by its existence.

I know that I can't know you by the reading of a single book, but I find pieces of you in different books and different words and the hunting is so interesting.