The Imaginarium

" Medicine for the soul."  

~Inscription over the door of the Library at Thebes

The curious thing about deprivation is you often don't realize you are until you no longer aren't. This was the case with me and books until my tuk tuk driver passed a giant bookstore on the way back to town. My heart did a somersaulting leap and landed so hard my stomach fluttered. My pulse quickened to a pace that threatened to cause me to faint.

Entering the store I am nearly knocked out again by the musk of pages too long unturned and, as I run my fingers along dusty spines that fill the shelves, I feel an old familiar thrill creep tenderly into my blood. Picking my way through and around cardboard boxes overflowing with books I wonder how I could have possibly forgotten the excitement of these amassed and collected words, compiled and composed of paper, glue and ink hunting for the one, or two, or five that might be arranged in unputtable-down order.

They are a coterie of friends I had yet to meet, just waiting to divulge the existence of someone they know that I really ought to meet, a place I simply must see before the tourists take over, a story so completely unhinged it can only be true even if it's not. I wile away most of the afternoon, spines snap crackle open and paper whispers beneath my fingers, at turns conspiratorial then seductive, words -beautiful familiar words in my own mother tongue- caressing so many too long untouched places in my soul, soothing my shriveling and parched spirit. Language that leaps, words that waft, sentences that scintillate and simmer; I am transfixed and utterly lost to the world.

By the time I finally tear myself away from the shelves I have amassed a bagful of books and an even deeper and more terrifying understanding of just how much of who I am is being denied by my current circumstances. I wander down the street, find a wine bar with a patio furnished with giant wicker chairs, order a glass of fantastically affordable wine and settle into the overstuffed cushions to read until the sun begins to wane.