The Life-Changing Magic of Filling A New Bookcase
Well, not exactly. But it is fun - and qualifies as a Great Distraction (capital G, capital D).
“Anyone who has a book collection and a garden wants for nothing.” – Cicero
After seven years of co-habitation and three of marriage, my husband and I are finally merging our book collections. Sort of. The occasion is a new ladder-style bookcase — a “Christmas present” that I picked out of the West Elm catalogue. We wound up buying a small media console, too (on sale, don’t you know!) – probably the first two real furniture purchases we’ve made together, and certainly the first furniture I’ve bought in a long time. I felt like such a grownup!
The bookcase is now assembled (it was a two-person feat, and, amazingly, no marital discord was recorded) and standing resolutely against a wall in our little yellow-painted den. This is the room that I am trying to make cozy and colorful, more Susie-ish than the rest of the house, where we are still trapped in the decorating style known as late-period-divorced-lawyer-traditional. Think heavy Persian rug, a large red velvet sleeper sofa, a fraying swivel armchair, an oak chest with an oversized lamp, one thankfully low-profile upholstered loveseat that surely was once attractive, and in front of it, a very fine pine trunk (a keeper, that).
When I arrived, the cardboard boxes of vinyl records – Dylan, The Band, Grateful Dead, Little Feat – were still stacked in a corner of the living room. And he’d been in the house for five years since his divorce! His excuse? He worked all the time. Which was true.
The problem is that most of my furniture is in Delaware, in the little house I bought when I got priced out of the market on the Vineyard, before I met my husband. I thought I might get priced off the Island entirely, so that house was my back-up plan, and a perfect place for my parents in the meantime. My 94-year-old Dad – and my furniture – are still there. I enjoy visiting my furniture, but it’s not the same as having it here to lighten up the house. But it also doesn’t make sense to buy a whole lot of new furniture, either.
All that’s to say that I think a new bookshelf is a marvelous thing. And spending time filling it with books is simply swell. A Great Distraction (capital G, capital D).
I’ve put off this treat to myself – the organizing, the alphabetizing, the arranging and rearranging – due to work. I’ve been lashed to my desk all week like a sailor on deck in a raging sea, getting a publication to the printer, meeting my other deadlines. Hardly any good walks, except for one day, between snow and icy rain, when I set out through the mud, following the trail of deep horseshoe ruts down the back lane to the field — and wound up taking off on a run.
I had this urgent need to fling myself into the cold, cleansing air – to shake off the indoor-itis and to purge some of the bad energy that seems to settle ‘round if you sit still for too long these days. Being on the computer so much gives me easy access to the news, which is not a good thing. I am drawn to it like a moth to a flame.