Saturday, December 26, 2009

"Too often Nostalgia was my credit card of choice and I had run it too many times beyond the limit. Every place I'd ever been imbued with the memories, the precise emotions and the person to share it all with me. I'm told that readers take the world in just that way, through details, the impressions left in a scene, the light bathing the surfaces, so that no place sat unstoried. Sam had left the silhouette of his long form in shadows that cast sometimes for miles. I thought this as I made my way through the rows of books at the main library, that there were labynths of memories, the book I reached for contained its own narrative, the life it held between the cloth-bound book to its left--avocado with formal gilded script and the book to its right, a rumpled dark paperback, the story in each house it lodged in for a few weeks and the story of its return, reshelving and each hand that reached for it here, leafed through it and as I just did, set it back into its niche, though the instructions on the end of the shelf suggested it stay out for the formal reshelving of the library staff. I wanted to live here where the stories tangled around themselves and if one could only see them as tangible silks or threads, they might make a Persian rug or intricate tapestry of memories."

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