I will always have a library.
Be it a simple bookshelf that barely fits in my smallish room and bursts at the seams with treasured words, a few boxes of old favorites waiting in a storage unit, or a single novel perpetually riding on the passenger seat or tucked in my suitcase and coming along with me like a friend on my adventures, it is my library.
My yellow-paged, dog-eared, used and new and loved and unknown and borrowed and bought.
And someday it will have its own room. Its very own living, breathing, stretching, personal, devoted space. and its furniture will be chosen on the basis of comfort and whimsy and what-will-put-the-best-lines-on-my-face-when-i-accidentally-sleep-there-all-night-somewhere-in-the-middle-of-the-5th-or-6th-harry-potter.
And even if it has to share its corner with lamps, plants, toys, blanket forts, coat racks and mayhaps someday even a smallish television, it will always be the library. It will always be queen of its space.
"Go to the library and read for an hour," to the children.
"Please have a seat in the library," to my guests.
"I'm going to be alone in the library," to my To Do list.
"It's probably somewhere in the library," to every small object i inevitably misplace.
The smell of old books and the feel of threadbare pages will always be only one room away, just in case i need to lose myself in them.
The ones that move me, the ones that open my eyes, the ones that break something inside me and the ones that put me back together, the ones i eat up and the ones that swallow me whole in return, that make me fall in love, that compel me to lie awake at night and think and think and think, that make me feverishly underline every passage, that are the reason for the yawning and the dark circles perpetually under my eyes, that i could read 200 times and never grow tired of, that i obsessively loan out to friends because their lives simply won't be complete until they've experienced it, the ones that tell stories outside of what's written on their pages, stories about me and my life and how we came to find each other.
I will always have my library.
My yellow-paged, dog-eared, used and new and loved and unknown and borrowed and bought.
5 comments:
OOOOoooohh my goodness. Oh my goodness oh my goodness oh my goodness. GO READ THIS: "How to Mark a Book," by Mortimer J Adler.
(here is a good link: http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/adler.html)
It is a favorite of mine. Not so much for the specifics on HOW to mark a book, but more just because of the way he writes about the books. And his idea of "ownership." I thought of it when you said, "dog-eared."
i dont comment on your blog often enough, but i love it. and these libraries are fabulous.
Great post.
two things: one, I love this. second: ever since I saw this post I have had Whitney Houston's "I will Always Love You" stuck in my head (literally all day) and now it's morphing into "And Iiiiiiii-eee-iiii will always luh-huve booooooooo- oooh-ooks".
just thought you should know.
I think i want to turn this post into a little book to place on the coffee table in my front room/library in the making. Not even kidding. Brilliant and so so true to life!
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