At times I read to find beauty, at times to find knowledge, but more often than not I read to combat solitude. For better or for worse, I need to feel affinity. This relieves me from feeling lonely or adrift, as I often do. What are these writings, after all, if not a game of playing with an abstract interlocutor, if not pretending to converse with a like-minded friend? To write is to talk alone, and quien habla solo espera hablar a Dios un día.
In no way do I fool myself, like other people I know, into believing that this sense of loneliness sprouts from some form of superiority. Most people possess a perfect form of beauty, a secret delight, though sometimes in the form of an uncut gem. Not only that, but we are all, in a sense, alone. Within the gifted or the mediocre artist, the sharp or the blunt mind, the violent or the peaceful soul, original material is constantly produced, inescapably secret to everyone else, at times to themselves too. We all carry ineffable things: every heart knows too well what are the words he never speaks, the words to which all ears are deaf. They are like a scripture carved in the cavity of our chest, in a primitive language only we know, and whose words lack a translation that is quite exactly right, that doesn't leave something behind.
No, affinity (or a lack thereof) is not about intelligence, profoundness, wit or knowledge—it's not about sharing some common interests or a sense of humour. It's about a coincidence of fundamental values, matching conceptions of the elemental issues of life—freedom, death, love... And in this regard I do reckon that, though neither superior nor inferior to anybody else, I am somewhat unconventional, or at least guided by a strong urge not to be lured through traditional paths.
So yes, at times I read aesthetically, at times intellectually, but more often than not I read heart-hungrily, in need of remembering that others saw certain matters in fashion akin to mine. This, among other things, is what I find so attractive about the anarchist tradition. In figures such as Émile Armand, Maria Lacerda de Moura, Kropotkin or Élisée Reclus, I found not only intellectual stimulation, but above all friends. Quevedo's words are true: when reading, we listen with our eyes the words of the dead and we converse with long gone spirits...
My friends are not only anarchists. I felt this comforting form of spiritual affinity with Montaigne, with Antonio Machado, with Robert Frost. I long to find more living souls with which to feel it too. So far, at twenty-seven years of age, only a few have come my way...