A Word on Words

Musée de L’Orangerie

There’s a young man here, married, reading “L’étranger” by Albert Camus. Long benches fill the oval room to give you time to stare and take in the nuances of “Le Nyphéas”, the huge mural paintings of water lilies by Monet. He is my kind of person: reading classic literature in a museum, surrounded by the soft murmur of tourists who marvel at the scale and genius of such a legend. I long for my own book and don’t understand why I haven’t brought it.

This is a convenient space to read - big enough to let your imagination fill it with the story supplied by an author. There is so much white space for a room dedicated to the blue and green Giverny scenes, enough to let the colors of the adventure you’re on be projected all around you. It’s almost as if the room is your own personal backdrop and could be the color scheme needed to fit what you’re reading; dark, dense undergrowth for the murder and alienation, the pure white of the water lillies for marriage and joy, the red stamen for heat and passion, the blue moving pond water for drowning and rebirth. Any gaps you’re unable to create in your mind's eye, the space fills. He is my kind of person in my kind of room. I want to tell him so but as a reader, any sort of interruption rips you from where you are in your story. I know nothing of the story he’s reading, very little about the author, despite owning one of his books I've only gotten through two chapters of. He is so engrossed in it and it inspires me to go to the English bookstore I saw on my walk here and pick up my own copy, just for a bit more connection to this stranger.

The fraternity of readers is a community so tangible in its unspoken gatherings, so networked in unmet acknowledging, ready for more quiet and active participants. Despite my extreme desire to always be a part of this home, this universal group of readers, I, like most everyone else, am so distracted by the movement of media, of unobserving, or having others dictate a story for me. I lack imagination and creativity in a place known for imagination and creativity. I tell myself several times a day to get off my phone, get off my computer, and go read. Exercise my brain and the part of my soul that is an artist. I’m reminded of a line from one of my favorite movies where a young writer talks about how difficult it is to write a play, “but with a book, you say the word ‘castle’ and you’re there.” With theater or paintings or music or photography or film, we all see the same thing. It hits differently depending on our past, our emotions, our own history. But with a book, what we see is incredibly unique. An author writes the word “castle” and my castle will look like Iolani Palace, or the Belmont estate, or Neuschwanstein, or a Scottish ruin and yours will be the Bahia, or the Taj Mahal, or Buckingham Palace at dusk. So real to both of us, so completely different. As nuanced and individualized as each human being is, so is each book. And yet, we readers feel the same about so many things: you can never have too many books, you long for hours of undistracted time alone with your book, you lament not being able to read every single book that’s ever been written, you will gladly be seated in an uncomfortable position for the sake of reading, you stop to listen to the voice in your head that’s narrating and think it strange it doesn’t quite sound like you. We feel ownership of the stories - the author has given us the framework, then we as the interactors construct a building of monumental proportions around it, and will fiercely protect and defend that building. Like the deathly hallows tattoo on my wrist, we willingly brand our souls with the pain and grief and joy and laughter and beauty of these stories. Readers are rare and everywhere.

Reading allows for a safe space that we create; not an escape from the hardships of reality, but an adjoining room. A space insulated with words that turn into visions, scents, emotions, memories. It manifests a veil, too - a gauzy separation from what's happening around us on the metro, in the restaurant, on the park bench, in our bed. When so much is fighting for our attention, the agency we have in devoting our focus is incredible and incredbily hard work. Even now, I'm distracted by the other museum goers, communicating with my friends, the paintings surrounding me. When life seems to be okay with you flitting from one thing to another, reading demands presence, demands accountability. How many times have I had to go back to the start of a paragraph or a chapter because I've checked out - seeing but not registering? I abandon that safe space time and again because, despite my thirty-ish years of reading, I have still to learn that this safe space is necessary to my sanity and general humanness.

But that's the marvelous thing about books: they're more forgiving than most people. And readers know that - they know books will always be patiently waiting, never judging you for walking away for a moment, sometimes require a little physical handling, especially when you break their spines or drop them in a puddle or spill strawberry jam on them. We almost abuse the books that serve no other purpose than to bring us rest, bring us understanding, bring us belonging.

The next day finds me sitting in the Bibliotheque Mazarine, the oldest public library in the country. Like books themselves, libraries have become my comfort and haven, a place where researchers, scholars, students, and my community of readers have gathered to silently be filled with both the known and unknown. Hermione Granger, one of my favorite heroines from literature, once said, "When in doubt, go to the library." Have any truer words been written? You don't just come to the library to know you things, you come to find who you are. Any questions you have about life, philosophy, art, science, humanity, you find it here in the stacks and the bookshelves that reach towards the sky. Surrounded by books printed in the last year and in the eighteenth century and even before then, I wonder if I'll create anything that'll last as long as these books.The only thing that can damage these beyond repair is fire. Sometimes, I feel the same. But these are real-life, tangible immortals that have been looked at, held, read by, generations of others just like me. There's been a point of contention within the last few years amongst readers - actual hard-copy books or e-readers. I feel it really has become an "either/or" preference. I own a Nook, I've got the Kindle app on my phone, so I can't say I'm a purist, devoted solely and only to the printed word. But I can honestly say I only use either of those technologies in extreme situations, and I don't ever seem to be in those. Yesterday, in the museum, desperately wanting the book I was currently reading, it didn't even cross my mind to pick up my phone and open my app to Orwell's '1984.' I did that when I spent hours in a hospital waiting to be seen and it was hardly better than the alternative (staring at the linoleum tiles). It's so less enjoyable; as much time as I spend on my phone, I really dislike staring at a screen.

Reading an actual book is good for my senses. It relaxes my eyes. The weight of a book feels good and natural in my hand. The feel of paper on my fingers grounds me to the earth. The smell of glue and card stock and ink and papyrus is both nostalgic and fresh. There is an experience that comes along with reading a book you can't get from an e-reader. And there are so many places in Paris that strive to provide that experience. There's a bookstore on every block in this city; mostly French, but I've seen a Polish store in the fifth, and of course, there's the American Shakespeare & Co right across from Notre Dame, as well as WH Smith, the English bookstore I went to purchase Camus' "The Outsider", inspired by the man in the museum. I adore the charming novelty of the riverside booksellers with their green kiosks, selling milky white tomes with red titles and leather-bound classics (such as my "A Recherche du Temps Perdue"). I've never seen anything like this in the states. The French are readers; that much is joyfully obvious.

And while I can't literally comprehend what they're reading, I can relate and participate in the simple desire to sit with a good book and read.