Ex Libris
How do I explain my strange love affair with books? I'm not alone. Having moved several times recently my shelves are a hodge-podge of genres. Moliere, Candide, Cervantes next to Nausicaa and Jimmy Corrigan. There is love poetry and photography, droll fictions and the mad writings of beat poets and St. Augustine and Gregory of Tour's History of the Franks, graphic novels and biographies of Russian empresses. Don't forget all the modern apocalyptic prophecies, drug-addled honey tongued eloquence, and a beautiful myriad of crop circles and extra terrestrial channelings.
I am inspired by their presence, by their content. Within them lie whole worlds and generations of ideas and speculations and dreams and values. It is a strange fractured record we keep of ourselves. I hold onto all of these, many of which I've read in full and just as many I keep for the ideas they represent or for the occasional glance and skimming of inspiration. I love so many of them, but how do I part with them?