The Boy and the Dog are Sleeping

Les Miserables was the last book i read and i haven't yet been able to pick up another. it's one of those books that you have to sit with for awhile. it feels like adultery to move on. it impacts you so deeply, becoming a part of who you want to be. Victor Hugo unites words like no one else. words become poetry instead of sentences, paragraphs become longings instead of chapters. and before you know it how you view life and love is totally flipped upside down and inside out. you can no longer be who you were before you read the book.

i couldn't bring myself to read another until today. my friend Jeremy bought me a copy of a book he hasn't been able to shake to this day, The Boy and the Dog are Sleeping.

"Sometimes I think I am insane.
Why would anyone sane adopt a child with AIDS?
It terrifies me to write this book. I am afraid. I am afraid of dragons.
I am afraid of losing my mind. I want something no one is allowed to have.
I want the mad ones. The children mad enough to struggle and survive. I want the children who have seen war. The children mad enough to question everything. The children who have had everything taken away from them. The children who are broken and mad enough to attempt to repair themselves. The children mad enough to spit and fight. Mad enough to laugh outrageously. Mad enough to make music of their own. Mad enough to see themselves as individuals. I want children who will dance in the rain. I want the mad, crazy ones. I want the ones insane enough to love hard, and brave enough to be vulnerable.
I do not know where this book begins.
I am haunted by deep, electric flashes of music, memories, dragons, and madness."