When You're Not Looking

Something happens when I walk into a bookstore. I don't know how to explain it, but I feel like I'm sitting in the roller coaster waiting for the ride to start. My stomach's gripped by this anxiousness, this nervousness.

I walk around book displays of new fiction, of the great artists, of journals, of greeting cards, of books on sale. I peer and smile and laugh to myself, at myself. I get enveloped in the store, in the shelves and shelves of books, of people. I want to read every book; I want to wrap my mind around every book and make it a part of me. I feel like Johnny Number Five, "Input...More Input!" In fact, I can see myself in my mind voraciously reading book after book in the store, throwing them over my shoulder.

You know, the feeling, the feeling where if you could spend as much time as you wanted, as you needed, in a place, you'd know. I walk into bookstores, and I get this feeling like "this just might be the day!" The day of what? I don't know, the day of finding out, the day of getting it, the day of everything.

I got misty in Barnes & Nobles today while looking at a book of wedding vows, felt ridiculous looking at a book of 100 sex positions while an old couple were looking at a book on investing like a foot away from me, strolled down the New Age and Eastern Philosophy shelves looking for answers, and of course bought none of the books mentioned here. It may be prejudiced, but I've always thought that New Age and Eastern Philosophy books should smell mystical and like incense. And if you've seen one book of sex positions, you've seen them all. And the wedding vows...well, I'm pretty sure Josh and I will say the traditional wedding vows. At least, I think so, but who knows with this wedding.

I really did feel that way though, you know, if only I had enough time.

posted by molly @ 6:09 PM