Just Here.....

Today, after days of steady rain, the sun is shining, and my spirits lift with the light that filters through the closed blinds here in my study. However, here I am, inside, instead of enjoying the spring sunshine. Perhaps in a few minutes, I will venture outside to plant more seeds in our Victory Garden. But for now, I'm just enjoying the peace and quiet in my study, surrounded by books and the detritus of all my craft projects and ideas. Here is a photo of the latest wool squares I have embellished for my kids' quilts, which I am creating out of second-hand wool sweaters and whatever other material I have around the house. (I have, however, purchased new embroidery thread.)I draw the designs and cut the material, using the patterns I've created from my designs. Sometimes I search the Internet for images that will help me come up with a simple pattern. My search today (Google image search: "chickens") led me to the blog of an artist in North Carolina: Color Sweet Tooth. And that led me to the blog of the artist's wife: Moomin Light. I have no idea who these people are besides the representations on their blogs, but I enjoyed reading some of the posts and will return to read more. Sometimes I feel closer to the strangers whose writings I read late at night than to people I've known for years. And yet these bloggers still are strangers, for they don't know the voyeur who peeks into their lives through hypertext-created windows. Here we are. As close as the click of a mouse, as far as the ends of the earth. All at the same time. Here and there. Yet nowhere. Strange.

Anyway, in one post, the artist--his name is Steve--took photos of his bookshelves, and I was inspired to take a few photos of my bookshelves, as well as photos of other items in my space. I'm not sure what they reveal about me. Here are some of them.


This is, of course, just a very small portion of all the books I have stacked on shelves here in my study and in other bookshelves throughout the house. When we moved from Texas to Georgia in 2007, I sorted our books, sold a lot of them, gave what I couldn't sell to Goodwill, but I think I could have been a lot more ruthless in culling our library. I have a fantasy of getting rid of all the books I own except those that I really love, that I plan to read again or that I imagine will comfort me in old age--with their narratives or language or with the memories their words evoke. Just enough books for one or two shelves.

Occasionally I entertain myself with imagining just what books I would choose, a version of that old game, "If you were exiled to some desert island, what books would you choose to carry with you...." The novels of Barbara Pym would be on that list, for I can read those novels over and over again. And a novel or two, at least, by Elizabeth Gaskell and Jane Austen. Poets? Of the Romantics, I would choose William Wordsworth over Walt Whitman, the American poet Margaret Gibson over any number of contemporary poets, and a collection of Japanese haiku masters for my last breaths. The letters of Vincent Van Gogh and a book of his art. The poems of Emily Dickinson. Matsuo Basho's Narrow Road to the Deep North, and Other Travel Sketches, not just for the poet's language but also for the journey which the poet took late in life and for the memories this book will always recall for me: I was reading it on my second visit to northern Minnesota, in January, at the home of a good friend, when I was young and thought love would always be enough, would always be here, at hand, in the presence of friends, in the middle of shared adventure.