A friend was over yesterday, a common occurrence. It was rare, however, to have him peruse the titles on my bookcase. It made me strangely pleased and yet wildly uncomfortable at the same time.
To most people books are just that, books. Inked paper pages bound between cardstock and cardboard covers, occasionally with sketches or pictures strewn about. I'm not one of those people. The books I cherish become something more; the lessons and emotions from the books get carried with me. I get protective of my books, the way I'm protective of myself.
Then somebody decided to take an interest in my books. An outsider turned the covers, leafed through the pages, saw into my books. I feel like somebody caught me singing in the shower.
The way my books were judged and weighed, I felt that it was me. The collection of books I tote from dormitories to summer camp, my apartment, and back home again, they range from Seuss to Stonehouse, Homer to Gaiman, from maritime history to faerie tales, classic novels to children's stories to psychological studies on music's effect on the human brain... even the occasional Bible. These books boldly represent aspects of who I am, aspects I myself do not so boldly wave. A scholar? A child at heart? A musician? A theorist? A dreamer. My interests, furtive obsessions, the places I escape to when I slip behind my dreams, all these secrets on display for somebody else to see.
What if he saw what I see? That is an astonishingly alarming thought. For somebody, anybody, to be able to see into what makes me laugh, what makes me tick, and what makes me dream at night; it’s quite the exposé. I never thought a bookcase could be so revealing. I walk past it fifty times a day at least, and before this I never thought much of it. I saw my bookcase as some see my books, a compilation of materials with a seemingly insignificant purpose. Now I look at it, and I see something more. All those fragments of who I am, housed on display for anybody who sets foot in my room like a Smithsonian, but all about me. It’s unsettling.
As stated before, when he showed an interest in my books I was also pleased. I live my life half hidden. I keep a lot of who I am to myself, and let people discover me the way great explorers of the past discovered New Worlds, by setting out knowing nothing, and crashing into various fractions of my psyche completely by accident. For an individual to actively seek out those corners where I keep who I am… is an usual delight. Perhaps if somebody saw those books the way I do, if somebody understood how all the intricate parts of each tale intertwined with another, then it’s possible that I don’t feel so inside myself. I wouldn’t have to hide those corners for fear of being ostracized for having them. I could overtly just be, and be all right with that.
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