Bookstore Morning

In the early hours, the bookstore smells like paper. Before the cafe begins its preparations and before the morning workers spread out amongst the shelves to work. It is as if the workers are invading on the privacy of the books. Day after day, the books have the night alone to recover.

Before the books are moved. Before the pages are ruffled. Those first few minutes in the bookstore are crisp as the pages of the books.

The air is clean.

There are no sounds.

After the store has opened for customers, the entire feeling in the bookstore shifts. The feeling of calm and quiet, the smell of fresh paper is pushed back to make way for the image that the customers know. The air smells like fresh baked cookies. The espresso machine cuts through the quiet. When the front doors unlock, everything changes.

Customers queue at the cafe for coffee then spread out to haunt different areas of the store. The music department begins playing music.

The quiet that greeted me in the morning is gone. The feeling of calm is replaced with disorder. I know that the bookstore is meant to be used, but it seems a shame that its patrons can’t preserve the aura that the store holds in the early hours of the morning.

Write to Face the Monster

Ever notice that it is easier to write when you are in a gloomy mood? The words fall out of your fingertips and onto the page without much effort. Your head is so clouded with thoughts that writing seems like the only way to clear the fog. With each key stroke, with each click-click, with each character, you feel your load lighten.

Your mind starts to clear. Thoughts are more coherent. If you pay enough attention, you can sift through the remaining haze to uncover what is really bothering you. In that moment, you find peace.

Peace. Not because you have solved the problem. Not because the problem is trivial. The sense of calm comes from knowing what issue you need to address—knowing that piece of information means that half the struggle is over.

It is easier to face a monster when you know what to look for.

I Wanna be a Weeetch

There is a Halloween story in my family, a classic Teresa tale. It is a short quippy episode that reveals a bit about my childhood and a lot about how my current fascinations have come to pass. I only know the story through others since my memories do not include those first few years of my life.

As the story goes, I was about three years old. During that Halloween season I longed to dress in costume and take part in the festivities that my older siblings enjoyed. One of my sisters had a flapper costume and one was dressed as Jem. While these sisters donned very feminine attire and bright colors, I wanted to wear black. I wanted a pointy hat and a broom to fly on. “I wanna be a weeeeeetch! I wanna be a weeeetch!”

That is right. A witch. Not at all an unusual Halloween costume, but my childhood fervor for the magic has hardly diminished over time.  The ABC family show Sabrina the Teenage Witch kept my dream of another world alive all through the drama of middle school. I fell in love with Harry Potter before the rest of the US had even heard about him. My sister revealed the magic of the movie Practical Magic to me and I have been re-watching it ever since. I even have ventured into the world of chick-fiction that recounts the imaginative trials and tribulations of magic-practicing women in modern society.

Now, added to my attraction to the world of witches and spells, I find that the idea of being an elf would be pretty badass too (*courtesy of my bf from high school =D*).

So today, while watching LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring, I decided to embrace my odd fascination and hope that my wild imagination and dalliances in the magic created in these media will some day lead to a written creation of my own. Three cheers: “I wanna be a weeeetch, I wanna be a weeeetch, I wanna be a weeeeetch!”