at the library

 there are few spaces of greater peace for me than the library.

Ever since my first visit to my hometown library,... the library is a place of peace and awe to me.

I am still awestruck at all the books, together in one place... and yet only a fraction of what has been published through the centuries since the invention of the printing press.

It's like home. Cozy, temperate, with lots of places to sit and peruse the bound copies.  I have memories of wandering through the stacks. Stopping when I found a topic of interest then, arms laden with books, heading for a reading carrel... oh the interesting things you can find.  I could get lost for hours, no days....  

Books have been the one true, satisfying constant in my life. 

My earliest memories of books in the living room of our house, from the time I could understand anything at all....  I was given access to children's books as a small child, and taught to respect - not to do any form of damage to the books. My mother enrolled me in a book club, so that I got a book in the mail - addressed to me - every few weeks.  She gave me a book about phonics that was geared to young readers, and I could not even read at the time, but I would sit for hours looking at the pages.

Later in life, traveling for work, with time to myself on the weekends... seeking out used bookstores, just to soak in the warm feeling and the scent of old books. Whiling away the time browsing through myriad and miscellaneous titles.

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Lucid dreams, strange dreams...

I took a nap yesterday, and slept good for the first time in weeks.  But I had a disturbing and very realistic dream, with only small details being twilight zone-ish.

I dreamed that I was living in a neighborhood I left over 20 years ago.  In the dream there was a large family or maybe several families living in the property across the street from my home. There was a crowd of young males playing basketball in the driveway.  If you have ever been subject to the noise of a basketball constantly bouncing off of pavement,.. and echoing endlessly off of every house... that's annoying to say the least. 

Suddenly the young fellows noticed that I had been glancing out of the window.  They all flooded across the road - right up to my window, not quite pressing their faces on the glass.  In the dream the window was a rather wide expanse of glass. Then one of the young men somehow opened the window, sliding it aside.  I slammed the window shut again, and struggled with the latch.

When I looked out again there was a policeman standing in the midst of the young men, asking if I needed help.  When I replied that I did require assistance the young fellows fled - off the roof of the garage, where they had climbed to harass me through a window that was suddenly on the upper floor, above the garage.  (this was NOT the house I actually lived in, which was a one-storey home)

I blink and I am standing at the front door of the house.  I see the policeman, and when I invite him to enter the home he morphs into a black woman.  She enters the home and we begin to talk to each other.

I ask if she has ever held or fired a gun, and as she answers, "no", with a smirk she pulls a gun out of her handbag and begins to wipe it with a cloth.  I pull out a gun of my own, as she fires her gun into the floor repeatedly until she is out of ammunition.

At this point I woke up.  

That was little unnerving, but not strictly unusual in the realm of my dreams, which are at best described as The Twilight Zone. I was aware that I was dreaming the entire time, but this time not in control of any of it.  

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