the ghost library

Before Hurricane Katrina, I had a lot of books. Several thousand. And I knew all of them. Oh, I couldn't sit down and list off everything in my library - but I could look at a book and instantly tell you if I had a copy of it or not. I had a mental card catalog of the whole thing.

I still do.

I can go into a bookstore and run my gaze over the shelf, and the instant I process a book's title, I know: I have this, I don't have this, I don't have this and I think I might like to have it. Except... now I don't know. The vast majority of the 'I have this' results get a big question mark added to them, after a second. None of the books I lost to the hurricane ever got marked in my head as 'gone'.

My head is full of the ghosts of books. And every ghost lies uneasy: I don't know, with the surety that I know I once had a book, if it was one of the ten percent that were at my mother's place instead of in that ill-fated shipping container. And after I puzzle that out, I have to wrestle with deciding how much it meant to me, and if it meant enough to decide to get it again, instead of picking up something exciting and new.

Every trip to a bookstore brings some of these ghosts back to haunt me. Places that used to be a wonderful mine of potential and possibility have become full of a thousand tiny little aches of loss. The storm flooded my catalog, and every time I open one of its drawers and reach in, I find something dead and rotting.

a great day

I had the most awesome day today.

Yesterday, I managed to manage the expectations of my current freelance client, and gain some breathing space. And some cash. I went to the bookstore on my way home and got a few things - picking up a replacement copy of Fairies, and pondering if I wanted or didn't want a few other things I used to have is what prompted the post last night about the long-term effects of losing my library. I walked home with my nose in a Discworld book I hadn't read yet, had some ice cream, and didn't really talk to anyone. So that was pretty damn good.

This morning, Nick and Rik hopped in a rental car with Illy, who'd been visiting us for a week and a half or so. They drove to New Jersey. I was invited but I chose not to come - instead I got a lift out to Davis Square, and had some ice cream, deposited a check from Artspots, then went to the art store and spent thirty bucks on, well, a handful of pencils and pens. (As a side note, Artspots is pretty kick-ass in the gallery-with-print-sales department: they give you the money pretty quickly, and they have some really nice paper available. And they take Illustrator source files. And they're no longer furry only.) I got some hair bleach but I haven't used it yet.

I came home and didn't have talk to anyone for the rest of the day. At all. I played a mindless little video game on Rik's machine. I went out on the porch and looked at the sky for a bit. It was fucking awesome.

Maybe I'll be ready to be social next weekend. This weekend, I might not say a single word.