Not quite two years ago I was packing up my apartment to move to London, sitting on the floor staring at the contents of my bookshelf – all those books I’d been gathering, all those books I’d read and written about in various notebooks, all those words. I’d started being proud of the number of books on my bookshelf. I had no idea at the time how long I’d spend in London so I decided to bring 5 books with me and leave the rest in boxes strategically labelled so I could ask for the most important to be sent over first.
In London I obviously continued to buy books (seemingly faster than before to make up for the lack of them), and had a very healthy number of stacks accumulated in my last flat. I’ve yet to call in the books from Sydney because I’ve managed to live this long without them, I know I can live a little longer (and I can always buy a second copy of something if I really need it).
For the past month I’ve been back down to a handful of books again and they’re all untouchable pretending to be shelf legs on my makeshift shelf-system. The rest of my books are in my old flat, waiting until the end of March when I organise to move my bed here.
I wonder why it is I love having stacks of books around me. I feel misplaced without them.