Storytime

"Books, books, books!  Thousands!  Millions of them!  All spines intact!  All these will I give you if you will obey me," said Harper Collins, Doubleday, Pantheon, and Random House.

I am hauling out over one hundred books so far, in the soon to be reached goal of eliminating the book case in the living room/studio for room to set up the H-frame easel just given to me by a dear, retiring art teacher.  The above quote, twisted from Renfield in Todd Browning's film Dracula, indicates how many I have accumulated over the past twenty years due to a happy belief that the world is an evolving, large place with much to know.   However, if I ever equated books with happiness, that was only a partly right supposition, built on the ancient history of my aunt's attic which was lined with shelves of books.  The house had been owned by a dentist, and at the top of the scary, corkscrew stairway you scurried through the first room haunted by shapeless, crumbling furniture, then arrived at the second room which had an Oriental rug layered with a hundred years of silent dust.  And there they were, the glorious, wooden shelves lining two whole walls, packed with books.

The shelves were filled with cloth-bound, hardcover editions of The Bobbsey Twins, Alice in Wonderland, and hundreds of others that, in the attic heat, gave up a sweet, papery aroma which still drives me delirious when opening a book from a former century.  No glossy paper, no slick glossy covers, sometimes a handwritten note inside a front board.  This trove was there when my Aunt Dorie bought the house; she would allow me to select a few, then get more when those were returned.  It was part of the respite of visiting her and my cousins on Lafayette Avenue in the city, for I was allowed books at home.

In an attempt at creating a library of my own, I have amassed six bookcases worth, plus the books which sprout like mushrooms after a rain on smaller pieces of furniture, in a stack by the bed, or on the kitchen counter.  And the art table.  And the dresser.  Everything flat has a purpose.  They are sort of organized by subject; all the fungi books near the seashell identification guides and all other science.  Silent film has three shelves to itself, then medieval stuff, humor, reference, poetry, home, cookbooks, theory, ancient civilization, the little bit of fiction, and art.  Sort of.  But since moving things around, it's jumbled, but I love it.  Almost the same papery fragrance, they are comforting, practical; they give me roots.

Cookbooks are the easiest to pull; there are a few specialty books, like for cakes, various cultures, or soup that I will keep besides the old standbys.  But I will never make my own sauerkraut. Then there are the philosophy books which have teeny tiny print and references by the yard; I've kept a few of those, but hermeneutics?  Nah.  No more.  Algebra.  Hamiltonian paths are lovely, and the basis for one of my favorite computer games, Planarity, but it's taking up needed shelf space.  And so on.  It is looking successful.

You will find things in books that will never make it onto the internet; old dictionaries have words no longer used; old cookbooks will list hygienic standards, and advise against going out into the night, when poisonous vapors waft up from the ground.  Don't hang around swamps.  Don't overheat your brain.  Turning pages is a treat, and works without batteries; you can bookmark a page, write a note; go ahead, use pencil.

Reading in bed is a lovely pleasure, and there is a stack of books next to the bed; some are being read again, others have new subjects and ideas.  One of the first animals to crawl out of the sea was a millipede-like segmented creature, which is why today's modern millipedes belong to the class of crustacea, like crabs.  This stuff fascinates me, where things came from and where are they going, mineral, animal, vegetable.

Sleep well this cool summer night, take a book in with you and read; what is the commonality which links you to this story, whether of earth or city, fact or fiction?  You learn of the world, but you also get to know the secrets of yourself, and what to do about it.  Fall into your pillow,  I shall meet you up in the stars, midst the calm darkness, dreaming of wishes, dreaming of time.  You storybook, you.