$2 joys

It is a small store.  I've driven by it many times on my way to somewhere else, but today is the first day I stop by a little used book store on Miracle Mile across the street from the Japanese restaurant the college kids go to their freshmen year before they know where the better restaurants are. 

Three aisles of books in an order I don't quite figure out in the ten minutes I am there.  Regardless, there is a happiness in being there.  In being with books read and loved.  There is a freedom you can't get in a Barnes & Noble (I would say Border's but we know where that's going)...maybe it's because when you have to pay $15 for a book, you should be sure you love it already and even then you can't decide if you want to break the book in and read comfortably or protect the book and it's clean corners.  But when you pick up a book for $2 and it's already loved, it's okay.  Someone has loved the book so if you don't, you can pass it back to someone who will.  But if you do love it, it's yours to keep, it's one more little classic in the beginnings of what you hope will be a good library some day. 

Books. Oh, the joy of a book.  Of being lost in the pages, living in a world where you don't exist but you are watching everything.  Not knowing what will happen or if anything big will happen, or perhaps this is really just the narrative of a very normal life.  A good, normal book, with joys and pains and love and strife.  Pages after pages...

And so I sit for the first time in a long time, spending hours in a day reading.  It has been too long.  It feels so good.