A Sign
What do you do on a vacation day when the air is heavy with moisture and it doesn't just rain, but blankets the sky with wild raindrops?
For me a day full of rain means heading to one of my favorite bookstores and browsing.
We drove in a pelting rain where the lack of visibility made the road disappear and the wiper's work hard, but to little advantage.
On one shelf I found two new books by Terry Tempest Williams. Years ago I discovered her books on a bookstore shelf in Moab, Utah.
Then there was a book purporting to teach you how to draw your own alphabets--in six weeks.
Roaming around in a cozy bookstore engaged in deep browsing is like the taffy or cotton candy or bubble gum of earlier years. It's a zen trip that encourages me to release my imagination with each book.
Today I spent a page in Tibet, two pages watching a snail on a bedside table, and countless paragraphs and sentences in fictional settings.
I thought of a line from Cyril Connolly, " ... words are alive and literature becomes an escape not from, but into living."
And, yes, I did purchase a book-- not a book I expected to buy, but one that chose me after I found myself on page ten Periodic Tales:a cultural history of the elements, from arsenic to zinc by Hugh Aldersey-Williams.
P.8
From the moment of its discovery, each element embarks upon a journey into our culture.
P9
When I wrote my school essays... It was with an Osmiroid pen, a brand name inspired by the osmium and iridium that its manufacturer used to harden the nibs.
I had owned an Osmiroid sketch pen--obviously this line was a sign to buy the book.
For me a day full of rain means heading to one of my favorite bookstores and browsing.
We drove in a pelting rain where the lack of visibility made the road disappear and the wiper's work hard, but to little advantage.
On one shelf I found two new books by Terry Tempest Williams. Years ago I discovered her books on a bookstore shelf in Moab, Utah.
Then there was a book purporting to teach you how to draw your own alphabets--in six weeks.
Roaming around in a cozy bookstore engaged in deep browsing is like the taffy or cotton candy or bubble gum of earlier years. It's a zen trip that encourages me to release my imagination with each book.
Today I spent a page in Tibet, two pages watching a snail on a bedside table, and countless paragraphs and sentences in fictional settings.
I thought of a line from Cyril Connolly, " ... words are alive and literature becomes an escape not from, but into living."
And, yes, I did purchase a book-- not a book I expected to buy, but one that chose me after I found myself on page ten Periodic Tales:a cultural history of the elements, from arsenic to zinc by Hugh Aldersey-Williams.
P.8
From the moment of its discovery, each element embarks upon a journey into our culture.
P9
When I wrote my school essays... It was with an Osmiroid pen, a brand name inspired by the osmium and iridium that its manufacturer used to harden the nibs.
I had owned an Osmiroid sketch pen--obviously this line was a sign to buy the book.
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