Last year I moved abroad to fulfil a dream. I worked hard and overlooked exploitation in my workplace just to be able to save up money for studying. And when the time came, I fled and by using my little fortune enrolled in a course in the UK.
My student life contained mainly the following: attending classes, passing exams, and straying back to the same places over and over again, as though I had been a pilgrim of bookstores, unshaped weekends. A pilgrim of Waterstones, mainly.
I dazed my way in and out of Waterstones, up and down the stairs. I dazed deep in their café. My hands bought cakes and tea and my eyes started reading and sometimes crying too. And all that was me and wasn't, and weirdly is still me and isn't.
This blog is hoped to be the proof of what I’ve learned – and mainly, the preface of an anticipated reunion. For while I was abroad, I met a book. It was love at first sight. I didn’t even believe in love at first sight. I still don’t. But that did happen indeed.
One day, in Waterstones, on the first floor, in a corner hidden under the stairs, there it was. The Lost Soul by Olga Tokarczuk.
It was a thin, but grand book, with a lonely chair on it. I opened it, of course. I had long been looking for books like me. I think we all crave a gang, humans are always in need of fellow souls, but some of us also do crave fellow books. I was convinced, I had just found one. A very important one, in fact. It was a short tale with huge, full-page pictures.
Now, I think I have just realised what kind of book I’d be if I were a book. It’s a while-typing-kind-of-enlightenment, I’m having right now. I’d be a vivid, under-the-stairs hidden picture book. Happily living in Waterstones-oblivion. (And what a cross of ideas this is! For who is oblivious exactly? Waterstones of me? I of Waterstones? I’d need to write in a more precise manner, but I like a good confusion. Because, God, how I do secretly love all the chaos I set off. I’m only whispering the love of chaos in the era of widely promoted mindfulness and routine. Where humans thrive. Allegedly. So, all that happened afterwards might be well deserved.)
During that first meeting of mine with The Lost Soul, I didn’t read it, nor did I buy it. I just looked at it, opened it, smelled it, and promised myself that if I managed to finish the course, I would have it. As a form of congrats. To myself. A tap on my shoulder.
And then I fell ill – with covid, as many – just in the middle of my studies, got stuck in my room and dropped out. Consequently, I also lost my money. Now, being Eastern European means one cannot earn that amount just anywhere. That’s just the way it is.
Therefore, for me the year 2022 was the year of heartbreak and learning about social classes, status and the unimportance of singular cases, insignificant souls. Bleeding out faith in hard work and holding onto the last drops with cramped grips. Losing like this, of course, is nothing new to so many but became a first, fundamental experience of mine.
I visited The Lost Soul for one last time. To say goodbye. For I didn’t fail the course – practically speaking – but didn’t manage to pass either. I got stuck midway. Like a ghost, maybe, out of the system, but still unable to leave. There you go; I’m a ghost-picturebook.
I moved back home, walked through walls and preferred shadows. And Christmas lights. contradictory, I know. I talked to dogs. One day I will write about the paws of dogs. I don’t think anything else makes any sense. Or better phrased; paws for sure do make sense. I cannot say anything else about the rest of the world.
This blog isn’t meant to track my way back to wherever. Definitely not to the UK. I finished the course by selling something valuable of mine and spending my family’s money. And no, that money hadn’t been just lying around. Nothing material is just lying around in my Eastern European family. But culture and love grow incessantly. That’s how blessed I am.
When I was back in the UK again, months later, and managed to finish the course, I went straight back to Waterstones. The shelf was reorganised, The Lost Soul wasn’t there anymore. In fact, there was not a single one of it in the shop, as I learned. There was no single one in the whole city, it seemed to me. Quite a few shops that I visited could’ve ordered it for me, but I was about to leave the country the next day. Time, that bitch, as always.
I’m at home again. It’s hard to follow, I know. I hardly grasp the turns myself. I could order The Lost Soul online, but have the feeling that it should – will – find its way to me when the time comes. Not earlier. I just must not be there yet. Or, I’m just very wrong: on the wrong path, in love with the wrong book. Or I’m just very right: on the right path, in love with just the right book. Who knows. Not me.
This blog-space is meant to track the story – the history – of my meantime, my until. Space for reviews of - other – books. And maybe for a few crafty adventures. And maybe for everything else. Probably mostly for everything else. Lately, I’ve been really into papermaking, for example. I also like to wander in forests, strictly for thirty seconds, then I get bored. It’s tradition. We’ll see where all this leads me. Because either the answers will find me, or I’ll find them. Or I’ll remain on the road for a lifetime.
I’ve moved into this awaiting, like a persistent tenant. May God let me rent this dream.
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