Ciao, Ragazzo

Navy Buddy is shipping out in a submarine for his four years of "at sea" navy requirement. He brought all his worldly possessions to my house to store for the next four years, and I spent a lot of time finding places for his things.

Navy Buddy lives pretty light except for one aspect: books. The boy is out of control with books. While putting up his books, I found four copies of Milton's Paradise Lost. Four copies! But more importantly, I found Navy Buddy in those books. Nothing says more about his personality than those boxes of books I just went through.

There's the giant shelf of what I call "sciency" books, which makes him laugh. That's his advanced Calculus books, all his math textbooks, really, his physics pulp that he reads for pleasure like I read James Bond novels. It reminded me that he was only one or two classes away from a math degree when he gave up the pursuit of that and finished out with an Economics degree instead and joined the Navy. I put those on the shelf as well. Including the one for the Labor Economics class we had together, where one of our favorite professors went to Ireland and died suddenly and too young. We were both pretty upset.

There's the shelf of his Isaac Asimov collection. He first got me into the Foundation Trilogy, which I absolutely loved (and which beat out Lord of the Rings for a prize, by the way). I didn't expect to love Sci-fi, but I loved Asimov.

I put up his Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged (I stole the rest of his collection four years ago, and it's on my bookshelf now). We once played around with being Objectivists, and then decided that they were a bunch of assholes, at least at the university level. But it was fun when it was new.

I put up his Great Books collection, in hardback. I remember how excited he was to get them, as though all he had to do was read through that collection and "knowledge" would happen. They're awfully pretty.

I put up his little collection of Russian short fiction plus Dostoevsky. Most of that he snagged from the office of my favorite professor who was retiring. I always pouted that they were rightfully mine, as I was the prof's pet, but I guess it all worked out in the end. ;) I had even tagged those books with the year and name of the prof. I'd forgotten I'd done that.

I found his Japanese/English dictionary that I'd bought him for Christmas some years ago. It's in a nice smooth leather cover. It was more expensive than I could afford at the time, but I wanted to get him something nice. I found the rest of his Japanese language books. He was a "FLIE" major when we met--Foreign Language and International Economics. He also studied German (I put those books up, too) language and culture, and is still reasonably decent at it. I hope when he gets out, he considers getting a Master's in Foreign Languages & Literature under the G.I. bill. Languages were always so easy and natural for him.

I found The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe, that I'd apparently given over to him after I was done with it some years ago. I had written in it. I had completely forgotten.

I wonder what my own collection of books says about me.

We may have had our differences, but I hope he finds his peace.

-- Virgil