Bookstore

Ive made a routine.

Every time I start itching for a piece of literary awesomeness to chew on, I start to ask to go to the bookstore. Not as badly as I used to when I was younger and all that mattered to me was ink and paper, the words of a greater mind on a flat surface, waiting for my touch to turn the page. No, when I was younger Id flee to the car after school and beg with all faculties given to me by God to be taken to the bookstore. Now its a gentle nudge in my parents back, starting a week before I HAVE to go to the bookstore.

Like always, they say no. As a child it was a word that destroyed my world, to be told the bookstore would have to wait until the next time Mom needed to go shopping, or Dad had a few minutes to go and get an expensive coffee. Now I weather it, asking everyday, until it leads to the inevitable, me asking several times a day, even several times a minute. My parents, in the end, will give me a time and date they might take me and when that time appears I press until, RESULTS!!

Im in the bookstore.

Getting there is only half the problem. The moment I step through those doors a whole wonder of knowledge reels my mind and confuses my fingertips. Where to go? What to see? Now I have a job and money, trying not to buy EVERY book that fits my fancy and my shelf, despite the fact it may have to squeeze between a few old favorites, is extremely difficult.

But, back to the main event, where to start? On my left a whole array of children's books, favorites from childhood to the new series Ive had my eye on for a while. My right, an array of mysteries and romances and sci-fi, endless possibilities of enticing characters and nights awake with the reading lamp on hoping my mother wont wake. In front, a devastating display of all the classics Ive been meaning to read for ages and still find entirely desirable, despite their daunting appearances. And yet further still, in the bowels of the bookstore, loom the favorites of old and long forgotten, books on best sellers lists, books recently published and extremely clever, so many others longing to be read, so many plots and characters to fill the world twice over.

This is my true dilemma. Despite all my efforts I have never been able to read through the library or even a shelf of the library. If I were to spend all my time reading, a wish from childhood, or my life in a bookstore, or all my time in the library, without sleep or nourishment, I would still never satisfy my need for a good book.

My friends used to find me strange, my brother, a great fan of music and video games, even stranger, but I am who I am, and a book will always feel better in my hands than on a shelf.

Future family, I give you this warning: To find out who Hannah truly is and who she wants to be, take her to a bookstore... or better yet, keep her away from them at all costs, because the moment you take her there is the moment you lose her.

For the Love of Germany

Work. An excellent place with lots of unpleasant people. The people I work with are kind and interesting and honestly some of the best I know, but...

When I talk about my life, any part of it, I always feel like I'm being challenged on all sides as to what and how and why I live my life my way.

Unpleasant things do get brought up and tempers lost... mainly mine, but in the end work is work and Ill continue to work until they stop paying.

One instance sticks to my mind. And at the moment I wont forget it. Maybe further detail is needed for others to understand, but it boils down to this: the experiences Ive had do not need to be challenged. I don't need your constant opinion on why I should or shouldn't think my life a certain way. Ive done quite well on my own and just because you're a year older than I am and think yourself so high above me doesn't mean you're free to express your opinions on my clothes, my hair, my opinions, or my life.

I am much obliged.

Hamlet, inspired

To be or not to be. That is a question.

A question to live... or not to live. For me it inst necessarily death, but to live as I am. Apathetic and unseeing, never changing, never exploring, never asking and never knowing.

These people around me look but they don't see the real me. Trying "to be." They live and walk and breath, but they don't live how I want to live. Its more like swimming down a narrow stream than in the deep, vast ocean.

I need that ocean. I'm tired of this stream. Maybe its stupid to say, but I want "to be."