Sunday, December 30, 2012

walking with my mind




when every other girl was longing for dolls, I longed for books. Everytime I got money from a grownup, usually around my birthday or the holidays, I knew just what to do with it. Invest in paperbacks and hardbacks. Even after my mother took me to the bank to open a savings account. My bookcase filled up faster than that account ever did. The items on the shelves have rotated and changed over the years, but the bookcase is still with me. Though now I'm the tall one verses the days when I had to peer up to the top shelf.

Besides loving to read, books were my escape route. I could vanish into far off places and imagine myself anywhere than where I resided at the time. Walking was out of the question as I lived in car country. Instead of walking with my feet, I walked with my mind as far as I could go. Books opened up a whole new world for me, encouraging a desire to see a different view than what existed outside the living room window. Everyone laughed at me.  Bluntly told me that I would never make it outside of said car country and that I shouldn't expect anyone to help me if I were to venture past the limits of their horizon.

Then I put on walking shoes, dragged a suitcase full of clothes and books to this city that I made my home. I also didn't ask for help. In that first year I had to create makeshift shelves as I was living in a space that was not my own. After finding my own little private corner in my new hometown,  I put my walking shoes back on and ventured back to car country to grab the two things that mattered the most to me: my bookcase and my books. And in the start of my new life, with a window that provided a different view, one thing from my past remained unchanged: those shelves filled up faster with new additions than any other room in my apartment.

Friday, December 28, 2012

The Medicine for the Day

Repost from 2010 as I regroup and refocus from the chaos of the last few weeks :)


Wasn't feeling well, but there is only so long that I can stay in the house before getting cabin fever. Had enough strength to go somewhere familiar.

"Hello Mr. N"

" Oh hello!, you know what you're doing so you don't need my help." He says in his thick Russian accent and gestures to the back with a smile.

tabletops, shelves, floorspace and every corner filled with books, ledgers and boxes documenting over 100 plus years of history. All permanent, and a stroke of luck for me the originals as the state is too poor to document anything. Anger from the records keeper as no one seems to care.

Almost breaking my back to coax a cabinet to open it's drawers. This thing must be as old as some of the dusty ledgers around it. Been through it on three separate occasions and each time it refuses to open a different drawer.

Fingers black with dust as I gently sort through papers and for the second time this month I hear how unusual I am from the bespectacled man in the corner.

" You know, where I came from...history was destroyed on purpose, and here I go to work surrounded by it. People need to listen to what is in the documents as this is our future, not the technology that can rewrite history." He shakes his head and stares off in the distance for a minute. I try to keep the pages of ledger book from coming loose.