I get excited when I get a new book, not just for the pure pleasure of reading it, but also because when I’m finished it will take its place among the others with my ever growing collection of books. I know I’m not alone in this fascination with binding, and paper stuck together with carefully worded stories and information printed upon pages. No, I know it’s a club, a possible sickness. I’m a slight hoarder of books.
I even keep the ones that have managed to get water damaged in the many moves I’ve made. Yes, water damaged. I said it, It has happened. Yes, I am the one to blame.
Awhile back the bookshelf I bought at Target collapsed as I was trying to set up a photo shoot in my would-be dining area. All of my books went tumbling to the floor and for about a month they sat curled in the pink armchair that I got from my grandmothers bedroom. I don’t even know why I still have them. One was broken in transport, but yet they sit there – nestled by the stairs waiting to be noticed and loved.
I started cleaning one day and decided to move the books to the coffee table in the same corner where the shelf once stood. I thought, if nothing, it’d look a little cleaner. But they just sat in piles, untouched, unnoticed, not neatly set up cozy together. Every time I looked at them I could feel a pull in my heart. These books needed a home; they needed a shelf, a way to display them to the world. My goal is after all, to have my own library and collection of books. I want an entire room dedicated to books. I also want a darkroom, so I imagine this fantasy house of mine is going to need a lot of rooms to fit my desires, and you know what, eventually I know I will get there.
But for now, I have a coffee table of books… That was until I bought a bookshelf and my roommate Emily put it together. I had her do it because the last one I put together and we see how well that worked out. Within the hour after some grunts, some curse words and a lot of noise, I had a bookshelf again. I was excited and eager to give my books a home again. I picked up each one, remembering what they meant to me as I read them, felt their papery pages between my fingers and carefully set them on the shelf. Smiled. I could feel the books becoming whole again. Becoming more than discarded. Remembered, cherished and loved.
My books have a home, my heart has found a home and I, for the first time in my life feel like I belong. The books are me: they’ve fallen, they’ve been on the floor, they’ve sat unnoticed in a corner, they have been damaged, torn and carefully taped back together then moved and jostled onto a boring coffee table but now they can breathe easy because they have a home. I can breathe easy because I am home.
