THE SENTIMENTS IN ACQUIRING BOOKS
I, like most people, love acquiring books. Even though I’ve moved almost every year in my adult life - my book collection follows me and everywhere new I go seems to bring its own set of new books to collect, read, and hold on to. As I sit here now, I’ve been back at my house in Baltimore for four days and I’m looking at the books that fill the bookshelf on my headboard, reflecting on what this newest set means to me and that sometimes the act of acquiring a book is just as sentimental as reading it and not just because of capitalistic “retail therapy”.
Downstairs, I have a dark brown (black?) IKEA HEMNES bookshelf overloaded with books, vinyls, and other documents like my birth certificate, acceptance letter from the illustrious Morgan State University, and even my certificate of baptism from Pleasant Hope Baptist Church. That bookshelf had been full when I moved to this house in 2021. Truth be told, it was full when I moved back to Baltimore from California in 2019. But I just kept putting more and more on top of it, stuffing books and papers on top of others until my mother told me it was time to stop.
Beside this bookshelf is a small crate that’s also filled with books. These books, and the crate, come from the first half of my New York experience. I moved most of my belongings back to Baltimore after the unceremonious debacle with my ex-roommate Clif who still owes me $1,300 to this day. The small black crate was taken from one of the nearby delis outside intended to be used as a prop for a video and photoshoot. It’s one of my finest souvenirs from New York.
The headboard bookshelf
Eventually, I started bringing my books upstairs to my own room. Fellow artist Markele Cullins gave away the headboard as he moved out to California. It stayed empty for a while, mostly being a place I put my film rolls and cables. But as I’ve been coming home more, prior to moving back for good, I’ve started placing the books there and it’s become sentimental thinking about the books downstairs on the bookshelf, the books in the crate, and the books on the headboard and the different versions of me these books have seen.
There’s the walking books. Many of these books upstairs had been acquired from stoops across Brooklyn, especially in Clinton Hill and Ft. Greene. When it was warmer, I would take my lunch break at Ft. Greene Park and often times there’d be a book or three or four sitting on a stoop. The one I’m reading now, All My Mother’s Lovers by Ilana Masad was acquired that way. Also on my bookshelf are two W Magazines that were also acquired this way, sitting on top of a recycling bin as I walked from my apartment in Crown Heights to the Chipotle on Flatbush Avenue (the intention was to go to Washington Square, but it was getting darker and colder so I stopped midway).
Then there’s the gift books. A few of these were given to me by an institution. Worthy by Jada Pinkett Smith from the Enoch Pratt Free Library. Or Make Something Wonderful from the Steve Jobs Archive, given to me when I was living in California earlier last year as part of my corporate rotation program. Others in the collection are gifts from people, like Becoming An Instrument by Travis Matthews, a gift from my grandmother who gave it to me the last time I visited South Carolina in September. It’s a Christian book, a genre I don’t read too often, but every now and then I might open it and find a passage that tugs my wig a bit.
Perhaps the most special of these (although no one is more special than grandma) is the book Think and Grow Rich A Black Choice by Dennis Kimbro and Napoleon Hill. Anyone who knows me knows I’m not a capitalist in the slightest, nor do I subscribe to self help mumbo jumbo. But, I delighted in seeing the book, a surprise gift from my mentor Professor Verdelle. I was still living in New York at the time. She’d just moved back to Baltimore from a residency at the Schomburg. We set some time to catch up at R House, and I was there early so I went to GreedyReads and picked up a book Lover Man by Alston Anderson. I was reading it when she appeared and she marveled at the cover (which was quite beautiful honestly). She then revealed her surprised gift enveloped in a plastic zip loc bag. My mouth dropped, first looking at the colors and then looking at the title - Think and Grow Rich. The navy blue and sand colors weren’t too far off from the royal blue and sand of my own burgeoning brand ForwardThinking. I hadn’t told her about my brand, so this coincidence felt like a sign from God. I could’ve used any and every sign with the big transition that was about to take place and once I saw one I took at and ran with it. While catching up over pizza, I could only think about the perfect timing of the gift and how my path forward was the right way.
And then the last group of books I want to talk about in this chapter are my Chelsea books. Yes, Chelsea books not boots. (Lord, free us from the Chelsea boot). These books are the books I acquired during my brief stint living in Chelsea Houses after the aforementioned roommate incident. Fuck Clif for life, but, his incident allowed me this period of time to live in one of my dream neighborhoods with an arrangement that still feels miraculous.
I didn’t bring any books with my when I moved to Chelsea as reading was the least of my worries. I didn’t even know if I was gonna be in New York City for much longer. Work was whittling me down and the whole roommate incident didn’t give me much hope to continue staying there. Especially not with the way rent was skyrocketing back up. Eventually, I caved. You make time for what you value and I needed some distraction from the chaos that was my life at the moment and so I made a few visits to The Strand which was now a walkable from where I lived. Multiple short story collections and anthologies were acquired in the three months. I was a big fan of The Best American Short Stories and had got some older copies alongside a few other books.
When I look at them now - the books - I feel transported to that time in my life. These books take me back to New York walking the streets and avenues, seeing the lights from Madison Square Garden, the business of Union Square, the smoky cigarette smell that would radiate from the neighbors downstairs into my room, Kathy and her pomegranate juice and beef stew, and my collection of new books, divided between a bedside nightstand and a desk. In the same way that music can be a time machine, or photography, journals, these books and the memories attached to even just getting them - can be as such.