an ode to the written word.

In an age of technology overcoming all things tangible, there is much to be said of the holiness of a true book.

I was just overcome with the urgent need to express my thoughts. There is nothing in this world that can compare with the sensory overload of a quality book. Speaking just on the physical plane, it is a deeply sensational experience.

To begin, the smell of worn pages is like no other. I can bury myself and forget my superficial woes in that smell. I can smell the adventures. The fictional adventures trapped within the binding, but also the physical adventures that this object in my hand has taken before reaching me in this moment. I feel at home in this smell. I feel free and at peace in this smell. It’s a smell to take pleasure in alone, but it’s a good alone. Not a lonely alone. Afterwards, looking back, it’s a great comfort to relate with others who understand the feeling, but the moment itself is best as a solitary experience.

The feel. Warm and delicious. I love cracking a shiny new spine and feeling crisp new pages. However, there is no substitute for the comfort of a worn book. Running the soft pages past tender fingertips. Feeling all the bends and creases and tears. Touching the spine, the center of everything—the literal glue that holds the world together, withstanding all the rough love and urgency of a page-turner. Feeling the weight pushing down on the pinkie and the thumb, struggling to keep it within eye reach. Slowly but surely noticing the weight shift as the pages move from right to left again and again.

I struggle to describe the delicate color of a well-used page. The tender balance between yellow and beige and gray and white. Trying to describe it with each of these individual colors alone does an injustice to the page, but somehow all four together come sort of close. I shudder when feeling the dainty frailty of a single page. How can one fragile piece potentially be so vital to the whole? Held to the core by one flimsy thread yet somehow holding the answers to those questions not even imagined yet.

I get the chills just looking at a book and imagining all the adventure I’ve yet to discover within its comforting walls. Infinite places to go. Infinite possibilities in the world of the written word. Nothing can compare.

xoxoleah

Comments

[Turnthepaperpages.blogspot.com]

Yes! Amen! And beautifully written!