inklingfair I’ll have to admit I don’t read a lot of books – just a few over and over again. I rarely make new book acquaintances, and the old ones I keep on my bookshelf, I read and re-read whenever I need to get my bearings. Harriet the Spy and To Kill A Mockingbird occupy a similar mind/shelf space. I think I read them at about the same time in high school, a suggestible, pliable time. Return of the King was a friend during my dark (so I thought) college years. So were Watership Down and The Solitaire Mystery.
After a long dry spell of reading nothing new, I think I’d like to read Lost Cat, if only for the fact that it has a timid thirteen-year-old cat named Tibby who suddenly stopped being shy and fearful and began disappearing for days at a time to wander the neighborhood – perhaps not a sign of diminishing love for his humans, but of expanding and growing at an unexpected time.
Compared to my fifteen- or twenty-year-old self, I suppose I’ve been functioning at a comfortable level of self-awareness, but somehow today I feel somewhat like a Tibby, looking for something beyond the coziness of familiar humans and books and haunts. Not ill at ease, or willing to abandon the comfort of said humans and books and haunts, but suddenly hankering for strangeness and mystery.
From the book:
6. You can never know your cat. In fact, you can never know anyone as completely as you want.
7. But that’s okay, love is better.
There it is again, knowledge the love-language, and the thrill of discovery and re-discovery. I guess I haven’t tired of re-reading my old books because there’s something new every time. Did the words change? No, but I have. And it’s always a blessing to get lost.
***
The wedding preparations are starting up again and Josh’s family is coming to Bayombong two weekends from now. I feel quite calm about the whole affair, perhaps because we did make it through Bayani Challenge and the Bayani On Wheels 100+km ride relatively unscathed even if some things fell through the cracks. Some friends will be helping out, and Ribi is coming with me to look over dresses on Saturday – but I still feel woefully ignorant about so many things needed to whip up a proper wedding.
But that’s okay, love is better.
Photo by Mohak Makin on Unsplash
