Haysoos, Maria and Josef!
I'm having the old homestead painted for the first time since we moved in nearly fourteen years ago. Those are only some of the books that I had to pull down from only some of the shelves. Oliver told me that I had too many, and Henry reached up for the ones on the tallest shelves and wondered if I'd read any of them lately. Probably not, I told him. But they are who I am. I could give a flying foo-foo about that Mondo Londo woman who tells you to get rid of everything unless you can say that it brings you joy. The little French paperbacks of Balzac and Sartre and Rimbaud brought me nothing but agita when I read them thirty years ago, but when I run my fingers down the yellow pages and bury my nose, I remember Dey Hall and how hot it was in the fall without air-conditioning, how insane Dr. Daniel, with his American South French accent, pounded on the table and shouted OUI, OUI, OUI, HELL OUI! if we answered a question correctly, and how hard Sarah and I laughed when we quizzed one another on idiomatic expressions -- all 350 of them -- useless then and now. Il n'y a pas un chat dans la rue! we'd repeat, over and over, downing our Tabs and Mello Yellos, Sarah's curls riotous and as disheveled as her backpack whose contents slipped out and left a trail wherever she walked. I read La Nausee while swinging on a hammock on the rickety porch of a house we called The Shanty where I lived with my friends Missy, Hilary and Julia during my junior year. I felt literally nauseous while I read, the first time the body met the mind and one recognized the other and the exhilarating freedom of being alive. I'd meet my boyfriend Luke under the trees whose arching boughs had convinced me to give up my spot at the University of Virginia -- I loved the UNC campus, not the UVA grounds, loved the brick of Dey Hall, not the formal colonial architecture of Jefferson -- and we'd lie there on the grass in the quad, reading Auden and Williams and Yeats, Li Po and Tu Fu. They are who I am.
Cast my memory back there Lord, sometimes I'm overcome.
Yes m'am. Absolutely.
ReplyDeleteAnd oh- isn't the smell of fresh paint a joy?
Standing in the sunlight laughing. Lovely, thank you. They are who we are. xo
ReplyDeleteHell oui!
ReplyDeleteYes, indeed. My books are who I am too. I have a top shelf double stacked of my absolute favorites and I may not read any of them again but can't get rid of them. And yes, I can look at the spine of some of them and time travel right back to when I read them. I keep trying to cull the collection and just make no progress. It's a problem if I ever want to downsize or even just move.
ReplyDeleteI hope the new paint is lovely and that you enjoy putting your books back where they belong.
"run my fingers down the yellow pages and bury my nose...."
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely !
Each book is a number of journeys- the various ones we take with them from the very first time we open their pages and then...the other ones. The ones that just made me weep reading what you wrote. The journeys they took with us. The memories they made with us.
ReplyDeleteI must say, every time I move, I shed more books. I'm down to about two shelves that really represent who I am -- from a couple of bookcases full, originally. Moving does that to you! But at the same time I can identify with your bond with certain books, their feel and smell and memory cues.
ReplyDeleteI'm not going to show Tom this post - the book-keeper ... wrong meaning ... the book-hoarder? - because I, the person in this family [remember: we live in a tiny two bedroom apartment, European style] who moves books around, tries to shelve them all, and does the painting (and the cleaning around them books), have become so sick of them. Last year I got rid of most of my own books, so that shelves could be freed for other books that were sitting in stacks around the house, and you know - I don't miss them. Rather, I miss them, but I still have those memories within me, and I'm still who I am. And, yes, it was oh so painful, but only for a second.
ReplyDeleteI don't have a lot of stuff but I do have books. And no, I will not get rid of them. They are such good friends.
ReplyDeleteBooks are no less than our salvation. You have a lot of them, all well cherished. I put out 10 boxes of books two years ago but I still have a lot of them too. I wish I had a whole room to dedicate as a library with floor to ceiling shelves. In my dreams.
ReplyDeletefoo-foo?
ReplyDeleteGorgeous. And I wish I had taken French like you.
ReplyDeleteI got rid of bags of clothing a few months back after reading KonMari and I regret it frequently. I do prefer a less cluttered space but, for example, the other day I really could have used this shirt of an odd green-gold color that I had never worn before and may never have worn again.