In Love Again

Falling in love is one thing but doing it all over again with a familiar entity is wondrous. I have fallen in love again, but not with a person. It goes this way. I am moving and my vast, and dear library, is naturally, going with me. The restrictions of city living involve reducing "stuff" to a bare minimum. I can do without shoes and music and cookery tools, but I have a very hard time getting rid of my dearest books. They have been gleaned tenderly from stores, second and first, and from the shelves of friends who have invited me freely to help myself. I have, I say with a red face, gained other books. innocently, I might add out of the generosity of those who would lend them to me, and yet others purloined without knowing it.  In all truth, they were not meant to make their homes with me but during a long career and many moves, I seem to have acquired books that have the names of very good friends stamped securely, but ineffectively, on their titles pages. One or two of the friends from whom I borrowed same, have now gone to the great library in the sky or wherever they build them these days, and the other lenders are  mercifully somewhere I do not know. I do, however, harbour their books tenderly in hopes of seeing them again one day and being able to redeem myself. Truly, I have forgotten to return them, and then they eventually, slipped forever from my memory. Really! And although I have sheltered them merely through their being old and helpless looking,  I would, indeed, return them graciously if I could. I consider them, eternally, visitor books. But, getting back to the present, I decided it is time to catalog my books so that I can quickly locate them after I move. And at the same time, I swear to get rid of most of them. I have a grand piano to install as well.  With longstanding familiarity and forgetting the LOC and its reams of numerals, I stick to the easy methods in the orderly art of cataloguing and use good old Dewey. I understand him perfectly as long as he keeps it simple. My book shelves are my "walls" and thus I sit, day after day, with books and labels and pen in lap attaching and penning to get everything in order. But as I do this labour of love, I find books I have not read and want to, nay, need to.  It takes all of my willpower to quell that intense need and sometimes, I fail. A small pile of must-read-right-now-in-case-I-die-suddenly is growing at my feet. Among them are such treasures such as a bibliophile's calendar that has a review of a very famous book for every day of the year. And then there is the book by Columbo of the eeriest ghosts of every province  and another, a Margaret Atwood's fiction that I bought and forgot. These are essential to my peace and well-being and I know I must deal with them immediately. I have conquered one shelf now, and will delve into another tomorrow, but still have five more to go, all filled from top to bottom alongside their lovely dusty companions. I am overjoyed when I meet these old friends again, and as if  seeing an old lover coming up my back steps after decades, to envelop me,  I fall in love all over again. My books seem to reach out their arms, and I know I must  fall into them and cosy up once again. Let's see now - oh, here's Walt Whitman and ah, there's an Annotated Alice. Excuse me, I need to take a few minutes...