perhaps i should be studying...

There's a little bookstore a minute's walk from where some of my siblings work and on the rare occasions when I have time after I drop them off, I go.  It's just the sort of place you'd find in a--well, in a book actually. The door has a bell on it so whomever's at the counter knows you've come in. Except, they can't really see you around the shelves and shelves of books that greet you. That concerns me a bit because in the city, just about any number of strange people wander about. You might think they wouldn't wander into a bookstore, but I've has some bizarre experiences at libraries over the years, so...A sign asks you not to let the cat out.  A resident cat that lounges about and reclines on the countertop. I'm not much of a cat person but I do think that's splendid. It's a pretty cat, and I'm pretty sure  it knows it's pretty--I can tell by the way it looked at me like "Everyone loves me...and it's quite obvious why." The store itself is tiny and dim and dusty and crowded and wonderful. I always visit the art section first and lose myself in books full of photographs and paintings, old and new. If I could afford to, I'd probably buy the whole section. Well, maybe not, because then no one else would get to enjoy it. See how unselfish I am :) After I've had my art fix momentarily satisfied (no such thing as too much art) I kind of tiptoe to the back. I can't quite figure out how all of the books in the back are arranged, which gives me an excuse to spend lots of time looking at this shelf and that and picking up books at random. I can only go to the bookstore when I have time and money. Finding something to read is a delicate matter and one mustn't rush these things, plus it's depressing to windowshop at a bookstore. I started to read when I was four, so I can't imagine what it must be like to not know how to read. Or there are those who know how to, but don't like to. How can anyone not like to read? That's tragic. I read very fast and when I finish a book it's a bit of a letdown, you know, because sometimes I have nothing else to read and I'm compelled to read advertisements and the backs of cereal boxes. After I zipped through my weekly stash of library books, I would find other things to read. Poetry, Homer's Odyssey, all 1001 Arabian Nights (some of those are pretty wacky), Dickens, Kipling, Doyle, fairytales. And I still read children's books. Some of them are so good.  (I still watch children's tv shows on too--Backyardigan's rocks). The last book I read was hilarious: Gideon Defoe's "The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists/The Pirates!In an Adventure with Ahab" The Pirates! I absolutely love silly books like that. Perhaps too much. I read it instead of reading my nursing textbooks and that may partially explain why I didn't ace my first exam. Hm. The lady at the counter said, " Oh, I saw this book! I thought it looked pretty good." Yes, I thought so too, I said, as I reached over the vain white cat to pay. Every time I go into that store, I expect something strange and magical to happen. Maybe a trap door will open and I'll fall through into Wonderland. Can't say I'd mind strolling down the beach with the Walrus and the Carpenter :)