Love in the Garden Library
digging deeper into books, body and self
Dear Reader,
A mid-winter restlessness hit. I needed to do something more than watch birds at the feeder and document my frozen garden.
Part of this past week was unseasonably warm and most of the snow melted, but the ground was still frozen, except for one spot in the Garden Library.
So I channelled my restlessness and dug up this batch of books - The last in, and first out.1
The shovel’s blade entered the soil in a most satisfying way and when these frozen masses were released from their orderly arrangement, I was, once again, in love.
It is February, after all.
The ark of the log that had supported these narratives for nine months imprinted itself, completely transforming a small light blue guide book into a colorful abstraction.2 The smell of decomposing leaves and paper was pure spring.
While the pages of some of the books remained frozen, where they’d touched one another, there was life. Can you find the small brown bug and the green sprouts with new roots appearing in this image below?
This is such a glorious example of the synchronicity that can occur “Between Bodies.”3
As I scattered the books around, I felt as if I were in conversation not just with those who created these books, but also with those about whom they were written.
Camille Pissarro, one of my favorite artists, seemed pleased by the print the decomposition process left on the page describing one of his prints. Nothing like double meaning!
I loved the feel of the damp and moldy pages as my fingers slowly turned brown from handling the all of it.4 This was a bliss-out moment.
And then, that night, the wind blew and temperatures dropped. There was snow elsewhere on the East coast, but we just got cold. I stayed inside.
But this morning, there was sun and where there had been a bug, there were now leaves and a pine cone.
Where I had tried to turn a page of the Colonial Architecture book a few days ago, there was now a frozen paper ‘wave.’
I wondered if some might think it an act of violence or somehow disrespectful to put books into these conditions and to then move them, disturbing the very natural processes I am so curious about.
As with most things in my life, there are multiple ways to interpret this garden library I created on a whim two years ago.
In fact, that ‘whim’ came from somewhere deep. As a child, I wasn’t a ‘reader’ at all. I’d take the piles of books thrust upon me that my older siblings had devoured in quiet solitude and organized them on my shelves by size, color or shape. They were objects first, stories second, some of which I didn’t actually read until I had my own children and was finally interested in the narratives they contained.5
But now I am a reader. Only I have to be careful, because books devour me. An engrossing novel will draw me in and, because I am who I am, I can’t extricate myself. Days (and nights) later I’ll emerge, exhausted but deeply satisfied.
This morning, these ‘blank’ pages filled with shadows and markings made by processes I don’t really understand contained micro-dramas that transcend most of what I’ve read lately.6
These books contain mysteries and untold stories now interrupted by my ‘reading’ them, an idea that really appeals and makes me wonder:
What does it mean to ‘read’ soil, bugs, pine needles and leaves blown by the wind onto decaying paper?
And isn’t it cool that while books can consume me in one way, they are now being consumed in a different way.
Might it be that my seemingly whimsical creation of a ‘garden library’ was, in fact, a subconscious invitation to explore a deeper, more sensorial way of being that has nothing to do with content learned, and everything to do with who I am, in body and soul?
Thank you, books and photographs and light and glorious natural processes for being who you are so that I can be, and love, who I am - - a reader of a different sort.
During this season of Lent and light, may you find ways to be fully present with the all of who you are.
Thank you for sharing this time and space with me.
With cheers and gratitude for you being you,
Lyn
This particular set of books was the last to join the Garden Library in May 2023. I have written extensively about this part of our garden in previous posts (I hope it’s not getting boring). But really, who knew such a small space could contain so many associations, stories and intriguing micro-dramas? Check them out for more info!
Composting & Composing A Life, January 4, 2024
Books, Still and In Motion, October 19, 2023
Re-Composing Shakespeare, October 12, 2023
The Red Book, October 5, 2023
The guide was to the Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington, CT. My grandmother used to live just down the road from this homestead and love to take me there when I visited. She moved to assisted living in 2007, so my light guidebook must be at least 20 years old at this point…When I included in the Garden Library in May of last year, I realized that I hadn’t opened it since last visiting the lovely estate on a hill.
Throughout 2024 I’ll be considering this idea of Between Bodies as part of an ongoing exploring through The Kinship Photography Collective.
I don’t really know if it’s mold, mildew or some other thing, but that’s what it looks like to me. The only sciences I studied in high school or college were physics and astronomy.
The ‘reading thing’ has been a source of great anxiety for years. I don’t have dyslexia, but reading comprehension on tests was a bear. As a child, I questioned my capacities. Sadly, my mother, grandmother and aunts were all avid readers. “Haven’t you read…?” was a common question. No, I would say, but they were not really interested in what I had been reading or doing or thinking. It was a source of connection, but also a kind of tyranny. Interesting how different power dynamics emerge in our lives.
Sadly, as I mentioned above, the only hard sciences I studied in high school or college were physics and astronomy; D (my husband) gave me Abraham Verghese’s novel The Covenant of Water for Christmas, so of course I had to read his earlier novel Cutting for Stone as well. Each one consumed at least two nearly sleepless nights!