A Bibliophile in a Bookstore…

Just recently, trips to the bookstore have become more frequent. Such a place, the bookstore. I view it as potential energy. I view it as a pile of secrets. The feeling I get when I peruse bookshelves is unmatched in my estimation. There is nothing quite like it. I chase the high of my first visit to a bookstore every time I return. A bit of a voyeur in this realm, I like to watch others as they look for their hit. Watching the search. Others, populate places I don’t currently browse, hoarding all that potential energy. The sections hold sway over each taste differently. The staff: Guardians. Guardians of the books, the words, the author’s intentions and apathies. Some staff have “the knack”, and know to interlope at the absolutely correct time and the absolutely correct way. These are the champions that guide us about the maze, and can recall the most obscure with a gleam and a flourish. Others, not up to the task, bramble about with good intentions, but fall short. They are there for relation, so we know the exceptional. Guardians, purveyors of print, if you will? Much like the authors themselves, looking to succeed after a fashion and entombed in the humanity of their abilities. The really great staff know; the others learn from them if lucky. Freshly printed, remainders, first runs, reprints, dog-eared and yellow, the books fall under the senses of touch,  and smell. A good worn book smells of earth and sweat and human compassion. It absorbs the energy and emotions of the reader engaged in fulfilling the social contract between themselves and the author.The others senses work transitively as vision begets speech. The speech of characters delivers the ramblings of their creator. Sound, the only sense not placated, resides in the imagination. No matter the doorway internal, all find a place on my egalitarian shelves.

I consume pages.

I consume words.

No law can shape or channel my necessity to consume the potential energy laid about the bookstore. All things being equal, a book can set me free from my tomb of skin and egocentricity, if only for an instant. Ahhhhhh! Again, the bookstore. Where journeys begin, where exchange is made, where I go to church. How can one not enjoy the long lazing lull of living libraries?

The stacks set me righteous.

Electricity coursing through my personage. Setting me on fire. Proportion of knowledge, disorder of intention, as there are too many ways to unfold in one lifetime.

Shhhhhhh!

Do not talk.

What an order? A mantra?

Pick your poison. Pick your passion. A life of reading, in reverent fashion.