the comfort of worn pages

In college it was the 6th floor of McKeldin Library. It was a large blue chair and table combination nestled back by a window behind stacks of musty periodicals. There’s something about the smell of antiquated pages. There’s something about the smell of old books.

These days it seems to be whatever book store I can make my way into on a sunny Saturday afternoon or just before closing time on a Sunday night. It's Barnes & Noble and Borders and The Annapolis Bookstore on Maryland Ave which has a delightful old school charm; you walk into the place and feel like you're walking through someones home. And that's the thing about books. That's what I hold so dear. On any given day, or in any mood- be it happiness, melancholy, frustration or stress, I can surround myself with books and feel at peace. I surround myself with those stacks of fiction and poetry and prose and I feel at home.

I suppose then it should be no surprise that my bedroom is a mini library of its own, each writer and his or her work carefully placed. Robert Frost and E.E. Cummings live next to my bed. We get along well late at night just before falling to sleep, and early in the morning just as sunlight begins peering through and I'm still slightly hazy from last night's dream. With them I dive into realms of romanticism and love, and an understanding of our humanity.

Elizabeth Gilbert settles on my desk along with the likes of Jonathan Safran Foer, Yann Martel, Malcolm Gladwell, and Agar Nafisi. Among other contemporaries is an edition of Taschen's Art Now and my favorite dictionary: an old red Webster's with gold lettering on the cover. Eat, Pray, Love stands at the center of the line of books only to be capped by staples of my childhood: Harold and the Purple Crayon at one end, and The Many Mice of Mr. Bryce on the other. I sit here, writing, making notes in my planner, or merely gazing out the window. I breathe easy knowing that before me are notions of hope, adventure, motivation, and love.

A large wooden trunk sits in the corner of my room housing an array of classic literature. A line of Austen, Hemingway, Shakespeare, Kerouac, Dickens and others stand proudly in the background of a collection of photographs of family and friends. I like to think subconsciously I wanted all of the people I love to live next to the words of all the great literary talent that's essentially shaped my life. I wanted the images of their eyes and smiles and intimacy to be supported by the delicious syntax and rhetoric of the greats ( at least the ones I deem 'great').

Tonight I found myself in Barnes & Noble, perhaps because I was feeling slightly blue and pensive and quiet. Not for any good reason really; maybe it was the let down after an eventful evening filled with cold drinks and home made treats and small talk with interesting folks. For whatever reason, there it was: the need to find some peace, the need to be surrounded. So there I was, weaving my way in and out of the Fiction and Literature section, perusing Art, taking quick detours through Cooking and Sports, all before ending in Poetry.

I woke up this morning and read E.E. Cummings. I think it best when he's read aloud and preferably to someone. Luckily a friend had spent the night at our house and indulged me in this beloved practice. And so we read. And so it seemed that he found Cummings to be far less romantic and sweet than I. But rather, saw him as depressing, tragic, and death obsessed. I still maintain that he is not quite as sad as one might think, yet while looking through the stacks of poetry I thought I'd give someone else a shot at resting near my bed for a while. Dickinson, Ginsberg, Whitman, and Frost have all had their time there as well. So tonight, I knelt down, closed my eyes, and picked William Butler Yeats off the shelf. Now I've always been a fan of his work, especially after taking a delightful poetry course my junior year of college in which my Professor made his love for Yeats quite clear.

I opened the collection of poems to "The Wild Swans at Coole," a favorite of mine. Particularly this part:

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

Tomorrow I will wake up and thumb through the pages of Yeats. I will attempt to finish the book I'm currently reading( Racing in the Rain, as recommended by my father), and rifle through the pages of Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, which gets a good read every Autumn. I'll toss a book in my purse, a Rorie Gilmore like ritual of mine, and perhaps finally get around to reading one of the newer selections I've lent to my roommate. It will be a day filled with books, as they all seem to be.

Because like I said, when there are books, I'm home. And there is nothing like the familiarity of home: its sounds and smells and memory. There's something about the smell of antiquated pages, even new ones. There's just something about books.