Hi friend,
How’s this letter finding you today?
I hope you have something cosy to read or savor this weekend.
Writing about my art these last 2 weeks made me think about another thing that is at the same time incredibly physical (I mean paper books, which fill a room, and which you can caress and smell, bury your entire face in), personal and dare I say spirirtual (yes even a smut book is spiritual in a way, don’t ask me to explain because I’m not sure yet how to articulate this feeling/opinion/knowledge).
But unlike my art, which I started acquiring and displaying more after my breakup, with books, it was the opposite.
But let me first go back in time (if you’re a long-time reader, you’d know I’m a fan of time travel):
I started reading at age 3, I started writing at age 4, and I never stopped. I grew up around books, and started collecting them as soon as I could. My childhood memories are all tied to a book - the book my grandma got me when I was sick at age 6 (The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe, naturally), perusing through books in my grandparents’ laundry room (they had so many books even their laundry room had to be utilized this way), how my little cousins and tehir neighbors would gather on the carpet around me and listen to me reading out loud, enacting the different cahracters, or just making up a story as I go, my dad reading and re-reading and re-reading Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now to me and the laughing fits that would ensue (from both of us), my first “novel” from age 7 which our family friends still have, scribbled in a notebook in my first-grader round handwriting (the protagonist was called Avital.)
And then came Belle. Well, she came somewhere in between all that, when I was 6, on a VHS tape my uncle Ari got me.
Like every bookworm in the 1990s, I was enchanted, and not by the rose; I was captivated, and not by the beast. It was a dream come true, in animation at least.
And I don’t even mean the library in the Beast’s castle. They had me right there at the humble bookstore with the ladder, or when the townspeople sang about how Belle’s nose was stuck in a book. It was me, I found my (prettier, maturer, better singer, worse decision maker) avatar.
By the time I left my marital apartment, I had 3,000 books. 500 of which were my son’s.
It’s a long and personal story, but I fled my marital home. For weeks in advance, I hid away my most precious books and art in my friend’s place, and on the day - I left with the clothes on my back, my computer, candlesticks, and 1 carload-full of clothes, documents, and necessities. Everything else in my post-breakup basement apartment was either collected by my friends from charity shops or bought on Facebook Marketplace, with a few items from Ikea.
For the first time in my life I had only 30 books living with me. Who was I with only 30 books? That was yet to be seen.
But it’s almost Shabbat, and I need to go make dinner, so the identity crisis and rebirth will wait for part 2. But don’t worry, there’s a happy ending.
For now, tell me about your history with books, please. I’d love to hear it. And also, if you’re in a season of unshrinking, may I recommend downloading my free Unshrinking Workbook? It’s a guided journal, and you can find it right here.
Until next time,
Yours,
Chedva x
ps. End the war. Bring the hostages home. Feed Gaza. Elections now.