BLUE SKIES AND BOOKSTORES

I love a bright blue sky and when one comes out, I have this irresistible hankering to head to a bookstore... Of course, not any type of bookstore. I am not particularly into those large generic box stores. But the little one down the street with not much of a selection but enough that there is always something that will peak my interest.

I love being a bookworm... although I prefer to be called a book butterfly. And on any given day, you can find my pudgy nose lodge between the pages of something good. So much of a love affair that I have for books, I remember once working down town in a very busy city and every lunch hour I would grab my book and run off to one of the city squares and park my rather large bottom in the shade and read until my eyes were blurry. On this particular day, I was coming back from lunch and was trying to get a quick chapter in on the elevator riding up to my office and when the elevator doors opened, a man who was riding the elevator with me stepped out and turned to me and said “maybe you should try living in the real world and then you will notice when a guy is trying to get your attention”. Of course, being me with the need to get the last word in, I said “why bother, my book satisfies my needs better than most men I have met.” As the elevator doors closed, he was able to quickly provide me with a not too nice of a hand gesture. Of course, other things have happened to me while my face has been firmly planted between the pages like the time I missed my bus stop because I just had to know the ending (I ended up sitting on that bus for another hour before it circled back to my stop with my legs tightly crossed in order to save me from a potential disaster), or the time I was sitting in a ferry line up and I was so engrossed in my book that I didn’t even realize that people were moving a head of me to get on the ferry (and yes I suffered an onslaught of hand gestures that day too!), and lets not forget the time I actually walked right into a telephone pole when I was reading and walking at the same time, yup that left an imprint on my face. But with that said, my love of books knows no bounds!

There is something amazing and extraordinary about a book that you could never garner from a movie or tv or video games. Your imagination is lit on fire and those ordinary words on paper transports you to destinations you never thought you’d ever see. I have been a pilgrim walking the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, I have been on the Continent with the Incontinent, I have eaten, loved and prayed in three different countries, I have been a rug maker in Afghanistan, I have harvested my fair share of Olives in Italy, I have belly danced my way thru India and I remodeled a house in Fez all without leaving the comforts of my home. My mind is this fabulous sponge that soaks up and sees every little detail that the writer is trying to evoke. Glorious, colourful details that set my heart aflutter... Oh how I love being transported into the imagination of another. By the time I am done with a book, I feel like I have personally lived that life. And if the book is really good, I even ever so slightly mourn when the ending comes... It feels much like the ending of a good friendship where it has run its course and now you must both venture off to new directions. I’m sad, if not just for a moment, until I open the pages of my next conquest.

Ah, yes the beauty of a book, not to be overlooked my friends. No matter how many times you are flipped the bird or suffer a head dent from a telephone pole, I would never give up the hours I have spent between their lovely pages. And to me, that's a love affair worth having!

Until Next Time.
Smooches Pooches