then, even before
I was six, books began
to happen to me
Adapted from this passage in the book, The Big Sea, An Autobiography by Langston Hughes.
In Topeka, as a small child, my mother took me with her to the little vine-covered library on the grounds of the Capitol.
There I first fell in love with librarians, and I have been in love with them ever since- those very nice women who help you find wonderful books!
The silence inside the library, the big chairs, and long tables, and the fact that the library was always there and didn’t seem to have a mortgage on it, or any sort of insecurity about it – all of that made me love it.
And right then, even before I was six, books began to happen to me, so that after a while, there came a time when I believed in books more than in people – which, of course, was wrong.
That was why, when I went to Africa, I threw all the books into the sea.
The silence inside the library, the big chairs, and long tables, and the fact that the library was always there and didn’t seem to have a mortgage on it, or any sort of insecurity about it – all of that made me love it.
Not any sort of insecurity about it.
I’ll pass over any discussion about working at a library and being aware of tax-payer funding and other such insecurities to focus on the magic and wonderfulness of that line, ‘[didn’t have] any sort of insecurity about it.’
Mr. Bono sings, “But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”
Sometimes what you are looking for is right under your nose.
A place with out any sort of insecurity about it would check a lot of boxes on anyone’s search form.
My motto,
As I live and learn,
is:
Dig And Be Dug
In Return.
- Langston Hughes
No Haiku For You 