One thing that I remember is that I felt so odd and like I didn't belong, and I met people who also didn't belong but then amongst them there was also belonging and not, an inner and outer circle. Eventually, I didn't care, I understood loneliness as a natural state.
When these books came to us (how?), it was everything. It was an encyclopedia guide to a world of which I inhabited a corner. And then I was not alone.
There is always the struggle to reconcile the attachment to being unique with the desire to find a tribe. These books were the tribes.
Yesterday, we were in Vesuvio and I thought I was going to tell the story of how people take me for granted, how I have granted myself for people to take. I wanted to be anywhere but the room I was in, suddenly ready to cry, and the books appeared on the sidewalk and I was 18 again, running to books, and this time the publisher was there and all I could do is say you changed my life, you saved my life, and we took pictures and my whole day turned around. Books will always save you if you let them.
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