Reading Again.

One day at a time. I've started reading again. It really isn't anything great. It's just online reading of good, reputable news services and studies. But at this point, I'll take anything my mind is willing to let me have.

Sometimes, showing enough care about the world outside of my own head seems to be the best thing I can do for myself. If I can take one step outside of myself, to see what is going on, I'll see I am not in the worst of circumstances, choices, situations. If I can see there is some sort of hope that can come by trying. If I can manage to create a relationship, a bond, some sort of contact with the outside world that I can reach for, maybe I'll feel alive and part of the world again. Perhaps then, I can care enough to do the things I'm supposed to be doing.

Essential Library

It's disheartening to see how little I've read recently and how much my "To Read" list keeps growing, by the day. There are just so many great books out there that has already been published in so far past and has been continuously published with the ever changing technology, mitigating circumstances of people, societies, countries and the world in large. I feel lost in worlds and in a life long marathon I'll never be able to catch my breath.

All of these stories waiting to be read, to be reanalyzed, again and again, until someone comes to interpret it entirely differently so that our perspectives changes once more. And the stories we've read that leaves its traces in our soul, mapping out our reactions, our understanding and eventually when we turn the mirror to our inner worlds, how it changes us and how much it allows us to create a new thread to our own world, where we come to understand ourselves. Each book lights a new candle, illuminating a new world, a new sense, a new self and new emotions we never knew existed, or allowing us to finally communicate what it is that we've been feeling all this time. That's what cleverly crafted and well told stories do to us, individually and as large groups.

So my library looks at me, forlorn and looking forgotten, a little yellowed out, wondering their instability now, a future that looks no longer guaranteed in my little library.

Libraries

There is something about libraries that always draws me in, comfortably welcoming me into the imaginative worlds of stories where the characters are bright, eccentric and follow their hearts and dreams. Stories of where time has no significance or meaning, whether it be past, present, future, or far far into the future where planets have been found, destroyed and cannibalistic dystopian futures exist. I could do all of this, cozily from the couch I am sitting on as long as I am enveloped by the silence of a library that drowns me in books and writers I've never heard of before. Lost in the collective knowledge, memory and histories of my craft ancestors that I so desperately strive to be like, painstakingly labor to become a better writer and share in their glory.

So imagine my happiness when I was able to access the library in between my rare work shift breaks. I say rare, because they mostly stick me with the all day shifts, which means I get to be on my feet from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. At that point in time, library closes. But to be frank, I wouldn't be able to go even if it did stay later due to my excessive physical exhaustion.

On the days that I can get an hour or two break, away from my sexist co workers, the overwhelming scent of food, my black clothes and being on my feet, the library has become my sanctuary, my hospice, solace and a pair of warm arms to softly embrace me, heal me and coddle me to an imaginary future where I did not have to do any physical, manual labor.