Dot Dot Dot, Deep Down Happy

The happiest place for me in a soul weary state is the bookstore.  Yesterday I felt worn out, stale and burnt out, and I knew I needed permission to go somewhere and get lost.  I wanted book reading and it wanted me.  

Hello, bookstore. 

When I go into a place like HalfPrice Books, I sense the subculture.  I feel it as soon as I open the door.  There's Doctor Who stuff everywhere, and notecards with all kinds of Zen sayings on them.   I am not drawn to those things at all, but it's comforting to know that every time, every time, I go there, someone is asking about these things.  'Where are the Doctor Who magnets?'  (Somehow this is always very pressing.) 

Sometimes I like being among things that really aren't like me.  I think it has the power to level out the thinker's heart.



Going to a bookstore, living among these people, takes my little overly social heart and puts it in order again. No getting around it, it's an introverted place to be.  I have to adapt to the people who pause differently than me, who don't want the surprises I want, who thrive when they have a plan with all things considered.  People don't really want to talk to me.  They're reading.  I don't want to talk to them.  I'm reading too.  Sometimes it's the kid section, sometimes sociology.  A far cry from, seriously, everywhere else.  Because I love people, I'm fascinated by them, and unless they seem creepy, I want to talk to strangers everywhere else.  

Furthermore, no one is asking me to be their teacher.  No one asks me for their time.  If so, I'm literally not seeing them.  If the phone rings in a place like that, you really CAN'T take it.  I put the phone on silent.  I can pray and zone out and forget that time exists.  It's the only place I know in this world that is THAT much off limits. 

There's war history and poetry in the back corner, and the clearance section along the back wall, and, at the counter where you can sell back your books, usually a fairly brilliant man with a soft voice and terrible posture.  He's sitting on a weird stool, and saying practical, clever things when you walk by.  He will, at the very right moment, quietly use the PA system and say something like, '....Amy...your books are ready...please come to the counter when you're ready.' 

I had to write the dot, dot, dot.  It's there in his voice, and I never know why.   And for some reason, whenever I hear those kinds of announcements, in that kind of a store, I get deep down happy.  I pause and put my finger in the air, and wait.  It's known, like clockwork.  

I go there as much to study books as much as the stories in the books themselves.  I study book dedications, copyright dates, the names of publishers, the look of the book from all angles.  I read the biographies, I imagine these people at their computers, slaving away in a way that is so mundane and ordinary.  I imagine these thousands of moments, all strung together before editing that you forget about for a time when you're finally on a book cover.   

This is the story of a soul being revived, something different in the every day, the evidence of deep down happy.  It's slower thinking, time apart, a boundary.  It's being kind to myself and living that out.  All good things for life, especially in perpetual winter. 

I think everyone needs something like this, especially when you can't get outside.   Do you know your place?  I encourage you to find it.