Healing Trauma, Perceptions And Attitudes: 1

This begins a slight shift in this theme, Gentle Reader. It actually began yesterday, with my New Year's Greeting, which was also saying goodbye to the previous series, Living With Trauma: The Healers. But like every well-done conclusion it was also to open this new series about changing perceptions and attitudes, as a gateway to healing trauma. I am sorting and cleaning through the books of my home library. It is rather huge, considering that I live in a tiny studio apartment, with some five hundred volumes, around half in Spanish. I have always liked the idea of having a home library. Perhaps this is rather a bourgeois concept, given the emphasis on home and possession of things, such as books, that are really public domain for knowledge, learning, enlightenment, entertainment, inspiration and spiritual edification. I have here a huge berth of reading material, among other things, a full set of vintage encyclopedias (well, from 1971, and hey they just might be worth something one day. Collectors' items? Anyway, they do provide an interesting window on a now vanished era, from when I was fifteen years old and there was a very similar set of encyclopedias on the family bookshelf.) There is nothing particularly pragmatic about having so many books in a cramped living space. They take up space, collect dust and can easily get under foot. Why not e books and e reader? One little click and Bob's Your Uncle and you can carry a one thousand volume library in your backpack, or on the airplane, or anywhere. There are also public lending libraries and these are an invaluable community resource. I am glad to say that books, contrary to the popular thinking of five years ago, have not gone out of fashion. Now that a lot of bookstores have closed down in my city there seems to be a small renaissance in bibliophilia. It would appear that the fate of bookstores in Vancouver would have more to do with going into receivership from astronomically rising rents than a loss of interest in paper and ink. My interest in books did take an interesting change when I moved into this subsidized apartment that has kept me off the street for more than a decade and a half. I had reached a point where I didn't want to have to go back and forth to the library and stress about due dates, renewals and fines, as well as the possibility of bringing bedbugs into my home. I wanted a presence of books in my home. I wanted the sense of foundation and ballast, of permanency that a home library can provide. I also wanted the tangible evidence that I now had a permanent place to live, finally. I wanted to see the books, not just open my laptop or my Kindle and hey-Presto! I wanted them fully visible on bookshelves where I could see them every day, and be assured that I have at my fingertips this huge selection and resource of knowledge, information and entertainment. So, when I moved into this building, I had the blessing of a secondhand bookstore across the street for my first five years here. So I went there, every day, and browsed, and looked and selected and bought, some outrageously and very cheap paperbacks at twenty-five cents a pop, but such a selection of good reading, be it Balzac, Atwood, or Jung or fill in the blanks. I have read maybe less than ten percent of the books in my home and there will always be something there in easy reach. Yesterday, while going through one of my three bookcases I came across a Spanish translation of Paulo Cuelho's "The Alchemist". I had begun reading, then was distracted by other books. I also discovered in its pages a lost and precious bookmark: a peacock feather. I will right about this feather in tomorrow's post.