When I was little, I used to read so hard that I wouldn't even hear people talking to me. I don't remember how I began to read, or when, but I remember the smell of the library, the lovely children's books with cellophane wrapped hardback covers and great glossy pages. That feeling of reading so fast it was like gulping. I remember the thrill of falling in love with a story ~ of entering that world. Of meeting those exotic people and walking through the strange forests and cities and doing incredible things. It informed my play: acorns and miniatures and houses build out of vines. Treeforts and a box of jewels and a cave under the headboard. I used to think, if I tried hard enough, I would find an opening to Narnia. (Aslan, after all, said there were more.) It was a terrible ache that I could not make that happen.
My life is still very influenced by memoirs, journals, children's stories, mythology, magic and surreal possibilities ~ the ability to be in norway or in ancient greece in the moment of picking up a book. The experience of a different life, and what I can bring back to my own after having been away.
I brought Anne Frank with me on our trip to canada. My bread-kneadings and walks outdoors, vistas and fresh air and swims were experienced while a part of me was with her in the top floors of an office building in Amsterdam. Five years ago I visited that house, and I have stood in her bedroom. The knowledge of her experience, and her dreams, were very vivid to me as I got to enjoy all sorts of things she never did, and never shall.
Tim took Bilbo and the dwarves with him, so the lake and the rainstorms, his runs through the fields and all the animal sightings were all overlaid with giant eagles, trolls, the shade under Mirkwood and long sunny lonely treks with vistas of mountains at their end.
This week I am partially in Italy with elizabeth gilbert, partially on the Nile with hercule poirot, and yet another part of me is wild-swimming with roger deakin throughout england.
*
It has come serendipitiously to my attention that this is my 500th post. In honor of this, if you leave a comment telling me which polaroid you would like to own from my shop (look here), I will randomly pick a winner and gift them the polaroid print of their choice. Comments end when I put my next post up.
xo brooke
*
28 comments:
Reading is good for the soul :)
Congrats on such a monumental post! I've no clue where my number lies :) I'd love the Flashing Polaroid. The color just sings to me :)
500, wow! D, in Roman numerals, just D.
I so enjoyed gazing at your polaroid pieces--thank you for the excuse to do so--and fantasizing about which one among the many I favored. Perhaps Japanese Temple.
Wow... "There is no anti-depressant like sea swimming." - Roger Deakin.
Thanks, Brooke. Congratulations! Here's to another 500 Times for Tea!
oh brooke. this post just took me back to the library of my childhood.
that had a spiral staircase.
and a wishing well.
and a giant stuffed gorilla that you could lean into while you curled up with a book.
i always loved the escape of reading.
often spreading out with a blanket and a flashlight under the dining room table.
traveling to some other world.
to this day i'm an addict of the written word.
+++
so hard to choose one favorite of your fabulous polaroids...but austen with figs is lovely.
Wow, making time to meet yourself here 500 times! Quite a commitment and an accomplishment! I have been travelling to meet myself lately in The Artist's Way book. A fun journey to be on, the meeting of ones self!
My favorite of the polaroids by a small margin over a couple others is "the lake dock", because I would want to be there....
oh brooke... your polaroids are all so lovely. it's hard to decide! i love your 'always time for tea' print as well as the 'talisman' print. what a wonderful giveaway.... i'm keeping my fingers crossed!
xo,
barb
...and I have serendipitously visited you here at your 500th post. Every post that I have read has been a beautiful gem too.
Each of your polaroids sing to me...you would have to choose one if I were lucky enough to be chosen.
i feel the same way. i spent a lot of time in the hospital and found television SO boring, so i would lose myself in books. i still remember reading White Oleander in the big adjustable bed.
is it wrong of me to just be honest and say that i can't choose only one of your polaroids? i mean, COME ON.
Hello...new reader here! I think it highly appropriate that I find your blog when you've posted about your love for books, as books are one of my reasons for living! I remember first learning to read and from then on knowing I would never be alone or without some far off place to explore! Congrats on your 500th post...that does indeed take quite a bit of dedication.
I recently stumbled on your blog and it always brightens my day stopping by. You have such a way with words and pictures.
My favorite polaroid is campfire tales.
500 posts! Congratulations. Lake sunrise sings my song. Love your blog, as always - I'm looking forward to the next 500!
My mom always took me to the library every week and I still go every Wednesday on my lunch break.
I loved this post. You expressed everything that I felt as a child reading my favorite books.
Congrats on 500 cups of tea ;)
xoxo
"The experience of a different life, and what I can bring back to my own after having been away." YES! Books change me in this way too...I fall in love with characters like friends and never want to part with them. Congratulations on your 500th post. :)
Book worlds are the best. I'm in Hogwarts with Harry at the moment. Your post reminds me of this:
‘There are no days of my childhood which I lived so fully perhaps as those I thought I had left behind without living them, those I spent with a favourite book. Everything which, it seemed, filled them for others, but which I pushed aside as a vulgar impediment to a heavenly pleasure: the game for which a friend came to fetch me at the most interesting passage, the troublesome bee or shaft of sunlight which forced me to look up from the page or change my position, the provisions for tea which I had been made to bring and which I had left beside me on the seat, untouched, while, above my head, the sun was declining in strength in the blue sky, the dinner for which I had had to return home and during which my one thought was to go upstairs straight away afterwards, and finish the rest of the chapter: reading should have prevented me from seeing all this as anything except importunity, but, on the contrary, so sweet is the memory it engraved in me (and so much more precious in my present estimation than what I then read so lovingly) that if still, today, I chance to leaf through those books from the past, it is simply as the only calendars I have preserved of those bygone days, and in the hope of finding reflected in their pages the houses and the ponds which no longer exist.’
Marcel Proust, Days of Reading
Congratulations on 500 posts, quite an achievement! I'd love Sunlight, if I'm lucky enough to be picked :)
Blessings for your writing, your photos & your truth!
I Would choose Icarus for sure
Awww, happy 500. So glad I discovered you and your words and of course your beautiful photos. Chamomile is the one I'd choose.
xoxo,
L.
Elizabeth Gilbert is a great tour guide! I loved Eat, Pray, Love!! Sometimes I daydream about a book advance that pays for a year of travel.
It was hard to choose a favorite polaroid print...so many! But - - if I had too it would be 'ideal morning.'
((xo))
amy
Reading is really like stepping into another world.
Talisman!
I can totally relate! I was (and am) exactly the same when it comes to books. And I am glad you mentioned Poirot- he is a very special one for me because I grew up with him, I was introduced to him by my mother and he just reminds me of her :) Congratulations on the 500th post! quite and accomplishment. I loooove the Ideal Morning print- It looks like you are sitting with someone, listening to the early morning sounds and having a nice satisfying conversation with someone :)
I feel the same way about reading. On long family roadtrips I would always have a stack of books with me to read. One summer I actually got banned from reading because my dad thought I wasn't interacting enough with people. That was the longest summer ever, and honestly, the reading ban didn't last long. Now I always have book with me in my purse. I feel better having one close by.
And for a favorite from your gorgeous polaroids... I think I will go with 'almost morocco' because it feels like something in a storybook. :)
The first year I was married, my husband came home from work, opened the door to our apartment - which had a string of sleigh bells hanging on it - and walked into the living room where I was engrossed in a book. He was standing next to me before I even knew he was home. When I read, this world all but disappears, and I am there...I loved all of your polaroids, but especially Lake Sunrise. Looking at it I can hear the water lapping against the dock on Lake Bomoseen.
Congratulations on your 500th post - I look forward to many more.
After reading your post I just want to make a tea and continue reading my book. And I will do that!
I still find myself falling into silence with a book; for that reason I love reading in a busy cafe. I can retreat into my quiet little world and then surface intermittently for some people watching and nosey eavesdropping. Breath beads would be my choice, though they're all so lightly magical.
Testing. I just wrote a long comment and it wouldn't take because Google is trying to make me add my phone number to my account. I hate to rewrite it if it won't take.
Ok. Trying again ..
The only time I ever got in trouble in school was for reading. I was in first grade. We were doing math at the time with a workbook. I was holding the workbook up in front of me because I had a book hidden between the pages of the workbook and was reading instead. The teacher walked behind me and saw it. I wouldn't be who I am or where I am if it weren't for books and reading. I don't know where I would be or who I would be, but I am pretty sure I wouldn't be as happy.
Happy 500th!
I am enjoying all your photos. In this moment, I am drawn to "lake sunrise", though I am actually thinking about getting another copy of that same print I bought for my sister. My brother just bought a house and he loves fishing; he spends a lot of his spare time creating flies. I thought he might like it as well. :)
Gorgeous post and I can relate to you as I have lived in my books since I can remember too. My daughter is the same as she has cried herself to sleep wishing her characters were real...Your photos are stunning. My favorite is the feathers, the icarus, for my girl :). Congrats on 500 posts!!
Congratulations on your 500th beautiful post!
I popped over here today having spontaneously bought a polaroid SX-70 camera for almost nothing last week. I have no idea if it works. I suspect I will be on a very expensive quest to buy film. But I've seen your pictures, and others too, and couldn't resist trying...
***
I love your ideal morning picture. Tea, and sunshine, and a friend, and a journal. What could be better?
(particularly fitting for me today as I've just officially started Sunday again (at 1.30pm) having had a very non-ideal morning...)
Gefeliciteerd! Glückwunsch! Congratulations!
As a child I read so much that at a certain point there were no books in the children section of our little town library left that I had not read yet, so I had to start with the books for adults.
Nowadays I am very selective about what I read. Same as you I carry a story with me while I read it and this feeling can be so strong, that it overshadows a certain moment, a vacation for example.
Just stumbled across your blog from another...glad I did!
When I was a child I LIVED for the bookmobile that parked at the end of my street. I'd grab my tote bag, library card and hop on my bike; pedaling as fast as I could until I reached this heaven on wheels. Stepping inside was magical to me, a big truck with shelves full of books! I'd pick as many as I could carry and head back home to devour them all one by one. Then I'd have to anxiously await the following week when the bookmobile would return. I wish I could say I still read like that; however I don't take much time to. But your blog sent me back in time! I also used to look for openings to Narnia. My grandpa's woods up north felt like they were part of the woods in Narnia...I'm sure of it! Someday I will finish the book I started writing about my childhood experiences in those woods filled with wonder.
God Bless
Brandi
http://livelaughlove-brandi.blogspot.com/
Post a Comment