I’m on a mission.

I want to read a shitload of books before I die.

I’m going to leave the quantitative interpretation of ‘shitload’ up to future me. If they’re really lucky, maybe the walls of their house will be constructed from the stacks of books they’ve acquired over their (I hope, very long and exquisitely fruitful) journey on this pale blue dot.

At this moment, 26-year-old me is new to being late-twenties and feeling a little woozy about it. I’m reading ‘Galapagos’ by Kurt Vonnegut on the recommendation of a now-former roommate.

I’m also back to basement-dwelling. This time, at least, I don’t have an egomaniacal 200-pound tumor following me around and chasing me out of any other meaningful human interactions. The ghost of my first cat lives here with me. The remorse and the grief perfume the walls. She rests inky on my shoulder.

I’m feeling a little woozy about being a 26-year-old basement-dwelling, tumor-less, cat ghost whisperer. I’m reading ‘Galapagos’ to invest in future me’s deathbed book shitload. Vonnegut is a masterful storyteller. We know this. I aspire.

In the third chapter, Vonnegut describes English scientist Charles Darwin as having been “a mere stripling of twenty-six” when he sailed aboard the Beagle in the 1830s.

And this stripling is living in a basement, behind a wall of three lifetime’s worth of junk, writing a blog post for a website they’ve forgotten to update with the latest book of poems they’ve published. Is anyone listening? I doubt it. And maybe that’s alright.

Darwin didn’t publish his ‘Origin of Species’ until 1859, several decades and an entire family life after he embarked on his grand adventure.

No matter how old you feel, you’re younger than you think.

My fruitful life, my shitload of books, will build slowly.

If I keep up the pace, maybe my north-facing wall will be constructed of the pages I’ve written. Maybe I’ll read each one to myself over the last year of my life. Maybe I’ll pull the rug out when I’m done, just so I can feel the full weight of a shitload of books on my old body.