The Birthplace of Dreams

I was staring at a shelf full of books - Dante's Commedy, Jane Austen, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Canterbury Tales, Aristotle's Rhetoric - a copy of Walden Pond by Daivid Thoreau clasped in my hand. The cover was of fine brown leather, as intricately patterned and precious as an elephant's hide, concealing within a whole other life, an entirely other world. I read the title in its flowing script, and the letters blurred.
Tears do that.
I'm note sure exactly why I was crying. Perhaps it was all those beautiful books, more than I should ever have the time to read . . .
Sometimes I wish I could just live in the library. I wish time would stop and I could sit and read for as long as I like. But knowing me, if that ever were to happen, I would lose all my contacts and my glasses would break. That, or the library would catch fire and, simultaneously, ebooks would cease to exist.
And so I must be content with the few minutes before bed when homework has ceased to make sense; when reason has shut its door and the imagination (the middleman of reason and affection) can take only from the emotions - which is what reading is for.
Staring at that shelf full of books in the BYU bookstore, I had imagined for a moment that there would be time to read them all, and in so doing had shut the door on reason; I had poured out my emotions in order to feed an impossible dream, in order to live for just a moment in my own Walden Pond, beneath the beautiful brown leather, within the elephant's hide, where the imagination soars and emotion thrives, where for a moment dreams are born, and for a moment reason dies.

When I don't have much time to read, I write about it. Kind-of pathetic . . . But what can I say? I'm an English major. And I'm loving it.

Candidly,
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