books and travel

Stories can take you somewhere even music cannot.

It seems obvious, but I only really realised this recently.

Last night I went to 19th century London. But it wasn't London that interested me. It wasn't even the going back in time part. It was the going into someone else's head part. Other people's lives are always infinitely more interesting than my own.

Last night I visited, or I should say, revisited, Maud and Sue and Zena. Or rather it was a bit of a mix between them and Sally and Elaine. All rolled into one. I am finding Sally more and more beautiful while Elaine's voice plays with my heartstrings a little more than a little. Damn! I missed Ghost Squad last week.... what the hell happened to Friday and where on earth was I?

You see, it's easier in a book. It's easy to keep turning and turning the pages while a person's life and heart fall out into yourself and it happens at super speed but it doesn't feel like it, years could pass in a book in only a matter of hours, and the only time you realise that time has passed is if you look up, or you've been interrupted and the cold hits you or the voices of this world, this time.

When you have nothing else need doing, it's easy to forget it as long as you have a book.

I woke up fitfully from a dream last night where she told me she'd been very happy and it made me miserable. Books can dent your perspective of what is right and what is wrong. There is no such thing anyway.

I woke up another night, I think maybe the same night, or the one before, or after, which would be tonight, and I couldn't see a thing, only hear the rain, thundering rain and knew that it was all rain and storm and rain and cold but I was warm and it was just the rain and I wasn't quite awake yet so I was quite happy to listen to it, to the rain, until I fell back to sleep again, and forgot about the rain or maybe it went into my dreams and I was sitting in a car and it rained all around us so that you couldn't see, you couldn't see past the rain, it formed a kind of blanket, the rain did, it closed us off and then it was all ok because in spite of the rain it was warm.

I bought two new books today. I am sure I shall finish them before the week is over and yet I needed to buy them, like one needs to hear the rain, like one needs to have a cup of tea in the morning with their panadol, to forget about the too much sleep, and I needed these books to help me pass these next few nights. And then when it's over, there will be more nights to fill with more books, it's ok, I s'pose, if you go to a library, but when you don't and you want to own everything you ever touch, that ever touches you, it gets rather expensive and you don't realise the price you pay until months later when you have nothing left, nothing left to give in exchange for new shiny pretty books that only last a night or two and then you realise that it probably wasn't worth it, but it's always worth it and you know it, because in a few months, maybe years, you always pick up the books again and they are new. They are old and they have formed you and the characters, they eat away at your heart but they are new in different light.

I think I shall go to London. It played a lot on my mind today. I had daydreams of becoming a Shane or perhaps meeting a Shane and then it would be fun, for a while, to play it like that, to know that it is all about running away and play it anyway.

One of my new books is shiny and purple and called disobedience. It looks trashy and cheap, but I found it and that made it special.