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| - Bookstores are dying, they are dying and I'm the only one weeping. I used to spend hours in bookstores, I spent entire days. I used to spend nights and weekends in bookstores sipping coffee and sharing coffee cake while I studied and wrote papers and sat with textbooks clustered around me. In-between the hard work I had books stacked next to me for my breaks. Brilliant authors who tested me, expanded my heart, and challenged my intellect: Reza Aslan, Edward Said, Ariel Levy, Melanie Klein, Jhumpa Lahiri, Jack Kerouac, Khaled Hosseini... I cried through A Thousand Splendid Suns, the tears crept quietly and to themselves. I read entire books from cover to cover in the bookstore, lounged quietly in one of the comfy, oversized seats. I spent most of my minimum wage salary at the time on building my bookshelf at home with new finds....
I used to look up from my studies to watch the soft snow falling down from the sky through the large paned windows, and I felt like I belonged nowhere else but in that moment. Books and coffee and long hours researching and writing became a splendid love affair of mine, a niche I'd yearned so long to find myself in - I gave four years to books and I never regretted a minute of it.
An ode to the bookstore, to the wretched death. In one year I'd found I no longer had a home. Borders closed throughout my entire city, and Barnes N Noble stopped offering communal seating in many locations. It was a shock to walk in and find we no longer had anywhere to sit and stay for a while, to dig our toes in and wrap ourselves up in our mutual love for the words. Local bookstores shuttered themselves up, going out of business sales, the sadness their deaths have encompassed in my life weighed heavily.... Harry W. Schwartz , Canterbury, The Next Chapter Bookshop....
There is a chasm, a trail for the misplaced, the unaccounted for... Omitted.
Where were the riots in the streets?! The protests?! Was I the only one shouting?
Was it only I who noticed?
Reflections on my exile are bittersweet as I take refuge in the public library, at Paul's, Renaissance, A Room of One's Own....
I couldn't handle anyone else leaving.
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