I love books. I know this is commonplace, especially here at Northwestern, but I am one of those weird bibliophiles. I don’t just like to read books — I like to be around books.
I thrive when surrounded, wall-to-wall, with books of every kind. The smell, the look, the feel of the paper conjures up a safe feeling. Knowing that each book contains the fruit of each author’s labor is just so humbling. However, I can’t help but wonder, what have these books meant to other people? Have they provided the shelter that I have felt?
During my last summer at home, I would frequent a particular bookstore. It wasn’t one of those artsy, romantic versions. Rather, this was your run-of-the-mill Barnes & Noble. There was nothing special about it. It was close to my house, and I could ride my bike there. Sweating from the ride, I would wander into the store, past the self-help section and the travel books, straight into that Starbucks-serving café. Paints a wonderfully bland picture, doesn’t it? Well, this was my bookstore. This was where I spent my Sunday mornings.
First, I would deposit my backpack. The table by the window was usually free. Its view wasn’t scenic — all you could see was the highway overpass — but at least the sun pooled with the kind of warmth only Florida can provide.
People sat around these tables, some meeting for the first time, some there every week. There was a young girl, maybe 14 years old, who played chess with the elderly men, joking with them as though she were their peer. She would challenge them all, not even seeming to realize that she was only one-fifth their age. This girl would look into the tired eyes of her opponents and confidently move her pawns and bishops. A smile would cross the faces of the men; they still had something to teach her. It was still such a strange sight to see. Why did she choose chess, and why here? The joy on her face negated any parental push, but there was an obvious tinge of loneliness within her. This simple weekly chess game bridged the generational gap that rarely sprouts up in everyday life.
It was here, in this average café, that I saw stories. These characters were straight out of novels: gregarious, or shy, or grouchy…
The next stop on my Sunday ritual was through the cookbooks section with the decorative hard covers that boast the recipes within, and into the fiction/literature section. The six-foot-tall mosaics of this section enveloped me, each space filled with a different color cover. Different fonts sporadically ran up and down the spines. I could get lost just reading the titles until the other people who shuffled through broke the spell.
After wandering back to my table by the window, I drifted in and out of reading whatever I picked up that day: fiction, non-fiction or maybe a magazine. I watched the words on the page and the shapes they made, ebbing and flowing in waves of monochromatic prose. Occasionally I would get pulled into the conversations of those sitting around me. Sometimes they were the questioning conversations between blind dates, awkward and full of discovery. Other times I would be in the midst of the loving exchange of young mothers having a cupcake with their toddlers. Their dialogue, with beautiful cadence, played with the characters’ conversations on the pages — a call and response.
At times, I would wonder where they had come from, what their prologue would have told me, had there been one. Where did the young mother and child come from? Had they been to the park? It would have been a nice day for the park. But they were alone, without a father. Their simple and naive happiness was so endearing, but I couldn’t help wondering what difficulties they may have been smiling and laughing away. Letting themselves be mesmerized by the bright frosting dotted with a kaleidoscope of pastel sprinkles. Maybe this Sunday visit was an escape from life for a few hours.
What would be the epilogue to the story of the blind date? Would they end up growing old together, bird-watching and traveling the world? Perhaps they would be back again next weekend, paired up again with a different possibility. Each week they try to rediscover love, or find it for the first time, repeating idealistic dreams and pastimes as though it were a job interview.
Back inside, at this café, where I spent so many hours each week eavesdropping on others, watching the regulars play chess, and — oh, what I was supposed to be doing — reading, there were walls surrounded by huge murals. These murals were not anything particularly fantastic. They were simply larger-than-life depictions of great writers past. Zora Neale Hurston, Franz Kafka and Oscar Wilde watched over all of us, almost mournfully. They just stared down and reminded me: I’ll probably never have the knowledge or talent that led them to write such eloquent commentaries and stories. But I guess that’s okay. I can read their words, and I can see real life play out before me. Sometimes that’s a better story anyway.