books are good.

well they're good sometimes, like today, if you were to walk into some random chain bookstore, which i guess more or less leaves only two choices, borders or barnes and noble, you'd encounter all manner of crap that nobody really cares about but about which people have decided to write books, essentially a lot of really unnecessary books. even despite that though, i really could honestly tell you that, by and large, i have a favorable opinion of books. if you'd have asked me that in high school, or even college, i'd have been wont to give a decidedly different answer, there's even a pretty good deal of anecdotal evidence to back that up. mostly i'm thinking of the semester that i spent all of $20 on textbooks, ironically the worst grade i got that semester was in the class that i bought the book for, but that's neither here nor there i guess.

so lately i've been of the mind of extolling the greatness of the old 97's and the other day i posted this, the lyrics to a song of theirs called "weightless," which for some reason was really resonating with me about that time. i wasn't entirely sure why that was until a day or so ago when i realized what i was reading at the same time.

anyways, i seem to have read a lot more than i think i have, i don't remember many times in my life where i can say "oh yah, i remember sitting down and reading this book." mostly i remember times in high school and college where i worked really hard to avoid reading. so the other day i was in a bookstore, on my way to the checkout stand in fact, when i saw a copy of the lion, the witch and the wardrobe, by c.s. lewis. now anybody that knows me halfway decently is pretty aware of my opinion of c.s. lewis, i've read a ton of stuff that he's written and the rule is pretty much if he's written it, i'm gonna dig it. however, i'd never read the lion, the witch and the wardrobe, and it was only six bucks so i picked it up.

you've probably read the book, maybe you haven't, maybe it's been a while, whatever. what it's about, at the heart, is these four lil kids who enter into a fantasy world called narnia through a wardrobe in their boarding house. i'm not sure how certain laws of thermodynamics were reckoned with, but then i guess that'd be missing the point.

so weightless is a song about heaven, the first couple lines say:

i reckon heaven is a place where time is nonexistent
and the things that are important don't take any time at all.

i don't figure that narnia's really s'posed to be a perfect parallel to heaven, if you've read the book you can figure out why. but the really neat thing about it, what i suspect is what subconsciously put that song in my mind at the same time i was reading the book, is that whenever the kids would spend any amount of time in narnia, it could have been days and days in narnia, they'd always come out of the wardrobe into the house at the same time that they left. kinda like the song, there were some really important things going on in narnia, the kids were busy saving the place, and it didn't take any time at all.

feeling: anticipation of the trancendent
thinking of: sunset
music: "with every breath" leigh nash and dan haseltine