Rediscovering books

“I believe now that the bones which formed me physically formed me in other ways too. Many people who grow up into writers experience themselves as different, left on the sidelines by illness, physical uniqueness, tragedy, some profound notion of their own solitariness. Only children often become writers, children from toxic marriages, children whose interior worlds somehow became more radiant than the regular world witnessed by eyes.”

A Better Woman; A Memoir by Susan Johnson

Books find themselves in me again. I find myself in books again. After a long hiatus, forcefully and unwillingly embarked upon a change of heart, a change of scenery, a change of place belonged to. We finally find each other again.

I stumbled upon A Better Woman while I was aimlessly wandering in the library, looking for solitary place to hide from the demeaning lunch crowd. Thankfully, the school library is well-stocked with books, giving it a damp smell which so often associated with my imagination of books. The racks are wall-to-ceiling high, and books fill every inch of it. One would definitely not call it human-friendly, but book-lovers will rejoice in its solitude embrace. As I counted from one to hundred, my fingers ran through the spine of books at one of the sections for parenting and family issues. I keep picking up one book after another, opening at no particular page, and reading it until it grew weary of me. A Better Woman, which is poignantly written on the subject of being a woman; a mother, a lover, a writer - without question immediately chose me as its reader. The writer vividly resonates my many thoughts, feelings and experience, and in a way, its reflective nature brought back to me the long suppressed impulse for endless (one might call it excessive too) thinking and writing.

The book got me started, it marked the beginning for the unfolding of the writer in me, and the cyclical process of reading-thinking-writing will stay for a long time now until the next hiatus. It is a lonesome life, albeit a prolific one.