Familiar changes in light are so reassuring. That building slowly sinking into shadow, or the laugh lines on that sky, the cross-lights glowing like the inner chambers of a beehive.

A promise is a promise, so go on and enter the emerald city.

At last, the sun keeps us warm.

Eliot's Bookshop is a place that marked my adolescence. This is where I would run to every weekend to spend my allowance, and a little later some of my student loan. This is where I bought my best editions featuring Collette, Anais Nin, Henry Miller, and Duras. Today I have to hunt down used books at cheaper locations (the BMV in the Annex being the Mecca), but I've suddenly felt an urge to revisit the old headquarters. Possibly because no other shop possesses the charm of 3 storeys worth of wall to wall pine shelving, smelling like decades of ardent bibliophilia.

From now on the ghosts of bare branches and concrete will vanish. All will be verdant silk.

Of note...

♥ The first honey ripe pear of the new year.
♥ Tiny china plates thrifted for $1, each relating to beauties I cannot live without; my grandma and my spaniel.
♥ Record sale at the Reference Library. At 50 cents a pop I am in classical music heaven!
♥ A small book of Julia Margaret Cameron photographs. Dreamiest of dreamers.

Life is a dream, the awakening kills us. - Virginia Woolf

The General sketches his map
The Spider weaves her trap
Think of the silver, imagine the gold
Consider the gems that each will hold
Once the dirty deed is done
And blood dries in the sun.

Haloed child on the verge
Of sounds that will emerge
Again in later years
To caress her weary ears
With the clarity and ease
Of a gentle summer breeze.

Twisted cornice, twisted gate
Twisted step, and mental state
It’s a most delightful high
Keeping time with days gone by
Oh the ghosts we each arouse
In the halls of Gladstone House.

Watch tower, dark and tall
From your lap the hours fall
May the Zephyr's tongue turn vile
So the hands upon your dial
Bend away from twilight woe
To the Rooster's blissful crow.