Listen to Jim’s 3-minute podcast:
http://redclaydiary.com/
or read his story below…
THE ENTRANCE TO ENTRANCEMENT
One particular customer at the old bookshop is wandering about, mouth agape, eyes wide with wonder, joy writ across her face.
She has never seen anything quite like this—a cathedral of fragrant old books and artifacts going back 500 years in time and issuing forth to her present day.
Are such disparate time periods and objects meant to abut and overlap and inform one another? She asks this of herself.
The customer then elevates her arms from waist to eye level, spreads hands wide, palms facing forward. It’s as if she is gently pushing at the looking glass, preparing to enter a world unknown until this moment. How will she get back? she wonders.
She has no idea anyone is observing her, which may demonstrate that she is indeed tumbling momentarily into the pleasurable comfort of childhood recollections.
It takes her some extended period of time to adjust to the fact that in a world as entrancing as this, she may never feel fully informed, but, ironically, she at some inner level feels totally at home.
It is as if childhood remains intact, deep within her, prepared to be remembered and cherished when called upon.
As she wanders about, an actual real-life present-day boychild sprawls on the floor of the old bookshop, casting about for some beckoning book cover to energize him into upright attention-span.
It happens. The right book about another boychild and his imaginary tiger friend pops into view. He is suddenly alert and, page-turning on the green carpet, transfixed into yet another imaginary world where things make a bit more sense.
Elsewhere in the aisles, a young couple delights in browsing and snuggling, giggling and chatting about this literary thought and that literary thought. They are happy and in love with both books and each other, unable to separate the two realities.
The old bookdealer just observes and smiles and feels proud that, ages ago, he fell headlong into ownership of this emporium, an emporium where dreams and realities truly appreciate one another, truly live in harmony
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast