I don't think I have ever in my life said the phrase "happy as a clam" aloud. But it's been floating through my head this week at the Newberry. When I describe my job to other people, it doesn't sound that amazing. But I feel so at home there. Around books, and people who love books and honor them and get all geekily excited about holding, in their hands, an object created by another human being and passed through the hands of other human beings (properly supported on a cradle, of course). There is something you simply cannot get from a digitization.
Today, also, I paged books that reminded me of friends. There was una Historia de Obstetricia, about Mayan birth customs, which made me think of Clare. Then a bunch of students from dePaul were doing projects about pirates, and paging these great collections of buccaneer tales from the 1700s, which made me think of Sam. So that's always nice.
I'm halfway through Holy Fools by Joanne Harris. It's all right. I liked her Five Quarters of the Orange much better. It's too late to abandon it, I think, but there are so many other books I'd like to move on to. Of course, I still have to finish unpacking my stuff so that I can walk in my room, and so I can find things. I hate not being able to find things. I have tried to accept the fluster of lost things in life, but haven't mastered the art yet.
(And that is a shameless, artless rephrasing of my favorite poet's most perfect poem.)
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