The Library

On an hour lunch break, I decided to go for an adventure and find the Newport Beach Library. I like to think that if my wallet was ever to be stolen, the thief would take the time to at least go through it and notice the different items. If they saw that I had six different library cards, I might be wallet-less and poor, but at least the thief would think me to be well-read.

I drove down Pacific Coast Highway, ready to add a new card to my collection. Although I went directly to the library, and walked out with several books, I forgot to get the card. You see, the bookstore was having a massive sale of antique and used books. The sale officially began at one o'clock, and by 12:45, the bookworms and collectors were in a line that went out the door and around the corner. Even when the books were mostly falling apart and in languages most likely not understood by the people purchasing them, they were perfect. I could almost feel the written words around me and smell the decaying paper. It was divine, and the people around me all understood.

Today a group of oddballs came together, their grocery bags and weathered cardboard boxes in tow, ready to be filled, over-brimming with the works of Hawthorne, Bronte and Huxley. When he noticed me hold a copy of Kipling's Kim, a stranger dropped a copy The Little French Girl into my hands, and started telling me the story of Kipling's imprisonment. An old woman was nearly in tears in the corner, hugging a book she said she hadn't been able to find since she was twelve. Everybody held at least one book, and whether it cost fifty cents or three hundred dollars, we all had our own treasure. There was an instant connect with everybody else in that room, a way we could look at each other and know: we are the literature nerds, the romantics, the bibliophiles.