Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Hide

Have been feeling pretty miserable lately thanks to being ill and on a liquid only diet for the past week or more. Sitting alone in the house, moping around, wishing I was somewhere else. Don't want to do anything, but I am also very bored. I don't have the energy to go out and I am not ill enough to sit still. It has been a pain. Random thoughts, phone calls, fever induced dreams, medicine induced sickness and worry induced headaches and I am now at the very end of my rather long rope.

I went out today to the market, needed to post something. Walked past shoes and clothes and perfumes, all of which tempt me when I am in a good mood. But I am not. In fact today I was just irritated by the in-your-face marketing these products get. Was I tempted...no..not at all...so I walked (read Stomped) into my favourite book store. Somehow the silence, the cool air, the neat displays and the quietly engaged looks of the people inside makes me feel calm. There is a sense of calm in looking through books, which not the same as looking through music. And is quite the opposite of looking through clothes. You look at titles, authors, categories of writing, new stuff, spines, back blurbs, imagery and you get absorbed.

I had been walking around wound up and rattled and tired. Then found solace at Waterstones, bought a bag full of books that caught my fancy. I shall hide in them, switch off the doorbell, the TV, the phones, the router, the laptop..and read. A good book is so special, and worth so much, I find it difficult to describe it in words.

I shall hide from the world, sometimes you need to switch off the rest of the world and hide in a cave. By yourself. Away from the noise, which perhaps you brought onto yourself. Away from people, with who there is constant contact and thus a need to keep conversations going. Go back inside your own head. And hear the silence broken only occasionally by a turning page. Bliss.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Awesome post.
I could spend my lifetime surrounded by books and not want another thing ... well, books and a few other things :D