The Library

This is a picture of me and my Aunt Ruth pouring over a book together. I love how engaged we both are; at ease with ourselves and each other. I love how lost I am in the story - so lost I've begun to chew on my own foot. I love how connected we are and how seriously Ruth is holding this moment of shared magic.

 

I love this picture because it documents the start of one of my most sustaining relationships - my relationship with the worlds we create for and offer to each other in books.

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I love paper books. I love how their stories sit in them all quiet on the shelf; stories that feel endlessly spacious all slotted into one tidy row. I love how they change and evolve while they’re sitting there – I pick the same book up after days or years and the story inside it is changed. Subtly, quietly. Just like me. I love that there are physical marks from the last time I read it or, if it’s a used book, the last time you read it. I love marks that show me what made my heart leap last time. Or your hear

 

I love reading the same books as you – you open the cover and a story unfolds inside you, and it’s the same story that’s unfolded inside me. In that moment there’s a space in us that’s the same. We overlap. And it’s the same space that’s been inside thousands of other people over time and across the planet.

 

When I’m broken up and broken open books help me feel connected to the bigger space around me. They make me feel like, though I might be lost, the space I’m lost in is known, and it might know me, and I might be able to trust it even though I cannot see the map of it.

 

I want to share books with you - the books that have held me well during times of wild unknowing. 

All of us, here on this page, want to share books with you.