Great essay! Unfortunately, my international nomadic life doesn't allow me to hold on to old furniture from home. My mother's house has just been sold and the contents disposed of, including bookcases. I had to fly out to Tokyo after I left the house with just two suitcases. I've even had to leave books behind, incuding, ironically, Anthony Powell's "Books Do Furnish a Room". I hope Philip Larkin was right when he wrote "what survives of us is love".
Thank you for reading and commenting! Amen on that last point. We can't take every thing with us; and, ultimately in the end we can take no thing. I thought a lot about the accumulation of things and our attachment to things in this culture in particular when writing this; things are a burden and a blessing. I'm sure there will be a point in the future where I'm ready to let go of things having let my attachment to them run their course.
Beautifully written, Emily. I am so sorry that the bookcase got left behind .... forgotten until it wasn't. I'm glad that you have other pieces of hers to feel that connection. How wonderful to have had the bookcase you just filled be transformed once its own history came into the light!
Thank you, Amy! I had just put the bookcase up Sunday and the feelings were raw for awhile and writing an essay about it helped me understand why it was so powerful. It's the stories that make the meaning of the things, right?
All my bookcases are from after my own great earthquake. Mostly from the thrift store. One day I found a narrow one, wood, Old IKEA, quality. 20 bucks. Yeah, I think I can carry this, I thought. I got it to the bus stop, feeling I overestimated my strength. Then a car stopped. The guy asked, were you planning on taking that home on the bus? Uh, yeah. Turns out he and his wife had just dropped it off at the thrift store right before I found it. They were moving to Tanzania and were getting rid of everything everything.
They drove me and the bookcase the stretch I would have taken on the bus, and then I summed up the muscles to carry it the rest of the way.
And this little bit of them, their story, now lives in my living room, and in me.
Wow! This is quite a story. Serendipity! It's amazing how much strength and resourcefulness is required to rebuild after life's earthquakes. Thank you for sharing a slice of your soul's story. 💜🙏
Thank you so much for suggesting I read this, Emily ... it's gorgeous. Sorry circumstances meant your grandmother's bookcase was left behind - I love that the memories were not; they are their, nestling alongside new memories, also anchored by books and their home.
We tried - very hard - to slim down our possessions when we sold our house and bought a van, a compelling imperative to take our ideas out of the safe context we'd stifled them in. We roamed, our reduced amount of 'stuff' sitting in a shipping container storage unit. Our books (save for the 50 or so I squeezed into our camper van) were stored in a friend's loft. Our beautiful concave, walnut bookcase, designed by Simon Pengelly was a ridiculous investment, a 'reward' to myself after 30 years in the air force. Perhaps I always knew that home to me would feel like home when the books were unpacked. Now the bookcase is nestled in an alcove in our French basecamp. I can't imagine a home without it now.
Thank you for reading and sharing your own story. Amazing that even as you sloughed off your other worldly possessions, slimming down to campervan, that you selected and then managed to fit 50 books! I still can't quite put my finger on all of this. Are we like faceted gemstones? Each book representing a shard of ourselves that when placed together on a bookshelf - like a diamond held by a ring setting - reflects back to us a satisfyingly familiar image of ourselves as a unified, cohesive, and complex being? I think this is it. When I look at my bookcases, I have one in almost every room of my house, I can stand back and say "Ah yes, that's me."
Thanks Emily. Bookshelves have played an integral part in my life since childhood. We have close to a thousand books in our home so we have lots of shelves! Someday, when I find my forever home, I plan to build a library with built in shelves. But that is probably not soon. I loved how you connected things in our lives with our spiritual or soulful self. There is so much connectedness to place and things at times.
Thank you Matthew for reading and sharing your thoughts. I cannot fathom thousands of books in one home. I can only picture wall to wall stacks. I wouldn't complain though. My father in law was a bibliophile who had double bookcase stacks across an entire wall. Built-ins are amazing for this reason. I had some at what I thought was my forever home. Couldn't take those with me. But, oh, the wall full of books. It was glorious!
Thank you for a beautiful essay. As an architect, I fully agree that our furniture can be imbued with intense meaning beyond their utilitarian qualities. Having lived in a weird liminal space with my in-laws just over a decade, I look forward to putting up some bookcases (and pulling books out of the garage) when we move into our own home soon.
I love this so much!! (I’m filing away your light bright peg for future use: I have another bookcase in this small apartment that where that trick would come in handy if needed. This bookcase doesn’t hold any books at moment, but is being prepared to display my few Dickens Christmas Village items...)
You are spot on about bookshelves housing our souls, and I wonder if that’s why they’ve always fascinated me (apart from the books). You can always gain such insight into a person by taking a peek at the books and objects on their shelves, how they are arranged etc. And I just love how you have given your husband’s bookcase new meaning by imbuing with the story of your grandmother’s.
Great essay! Unfortunately, my international nomadic life doesn't allow me to hold on to old furniture from home. My mother's house has just been sold and the contents disposed of, including bookcases. I had to fly out to Tokyo after I left the house with just two suitcases. I've even had to leave books behind, incuding, ironically, Anthony Powell's "Books Do Furnish a Room". I hope Philip Larkin was right when he wrote "what survives of us is love".
Thank you for reading and commenting! Amen on that last point. We can't take every thing with us; and, ultimately in the end we can take no thing. I thought a lot about the accumulation of things and our attachment to things in this culture in particular when writing this; things are a burden and a blessing. I'm sure there will be a point in the future where I'm ready to let go of things having let my attachment to them run their course.
Beautifully written, Emily. I am so sorry that the bookcase got left behind .... forgotten until it wasn't. I'm glad that you have other pieces of hers to feel that connection. How wonderful to have had the bookcase you just filled be transformed once its own history came into the light!
Thank you, Amy! I had just put the bookcase up Sunday and the feelings were raw for awhile and writing an essay about it helped me understand why it was so powerful. It's the stories that make the meaning of the things, right?
Absolutely
All my bookcases are from after my own great earthquake. Mostly from the thrift store. One day I found a narrow one, wood, Old IKEA, quality. 20 bucks. Yeah, I think I can carry this, I thought. I got it to the bus stop, feeling I overestimated my strength. Then a car stopped. The guy asked, were you planning on taking that home on the bus? Uh, yeah. Turns out he and his wife had just dropped it off at the thrift store right before I found it. They were moving to Tanzania and were getting rid of everything everything.
They drove me and the bookcase the stretch I would have taken on the bus, and then I summed up the muscles to carry it the rest of the way.
And this little bit of them, their story, now lives in my living room, and in me.
Wow! This is quite a story. Serendipity! It's amazing how much strength and resourcefulness is required to rebuild after life's earthquakes. Thank you for sharing a slice of your soul's story. 💜🙏
Thank you so much for suggesting I read this, Emily ... it's gorgeous. Sorry circumstances meant your grandmother's bookcase was left behind - I love that the memories were not; they are their, nestling alongside new memories, also anchored by books and their home.
We tried - very hard - to slim down our possessions when we sold our house and bought a van, a compelling imperative to take our ideas out of the safe context we'd stifled them in. We roamed, our reduced amount of 'stuff' sitting in a shipping container storage unit. Our books (save for the 50 or so I squeezed into our camper van) were stored in a friend's loft. Our beautiful concave, walnut bookcase, designed by Simon Pengelly was a ridiculous investment, a 'reward' to myself after 30 years in the air force. Perhaps I always knew that home to me would feel like home when the books were unpacked. Now the bookcase is nestled in an alcove in our French basecamp. I can't imagine a home without it now.
Thank you for reading and sharing your own story. Amazing that even as you sloughed off your other worldly possessions, slimming down to campervan, that you selected and then managed to fit 50 books! I still can't quite put my finger on all of this. Are we like faceted gemstones? Each book representing a shard of ourselves that when placed together on a bookshelf - like a diamond held by a ring setting - reflects back to us a satisfyingly familiar image of ourselves as a unified, cohesive, and complex being? I think this is it. When I look at my bookcases, I have one in almost every room of my house, I can stand back and say "Ah yes, that's me."
Thanks Emily. Bookshelves have played an integral part in my life since childhood. We have close to a thousand books in our home so we have lots of shelves! Someday, when I find my forever home, I plan to build a library with built in shelves. But that is probably not soon. I loved how you connected things in our lives with our spiritual or soulful self. There is so much connectedness to place and things at times.
Thank you Matthew for reading and sharing your thoughts. I cannot fathom thousands of books in one home. I can only picture wall to wall stacks. I wouldn't complain though. My father in law was a bibliophile who had double bookcase stacks across an entire wall. Built-ins are amazing for this reason. I had some at what I thought was my forever home. Couldn't take those with me. But, oh, the wall full of books. It was glorious!
Thank you for a beautiful essay. As an architect, I fully agree that our furniture can be imbued with intense meaning beyond their utilitarian qualities. Having lived in a weird liminal space with my in-laws just over a decade, I look forward to putting up some bookcases (and pulling books out of the garage) when we move into our own home soon.
I love this so much!! (I’m filing away your light bright peg for future use: I have another bookcase in this small apartment that where that trick would come in handy if needed. This bookcase doesn’t hold any books at moment, but is being prepared to display my few Dickens Christmas Village items...)
You are spot on about bookshelves housing our souls, and I wonder if that’s why they’ve always fascinated me (apart from the books). You can always gain such insight into a person by taking a peek at the books and objects on their shelves, how they are arranged etc. And I just love how you have given your husband’s bookcase new meaning by imbuing with the story of your grandmother’s.