Pure

Lava lamps cast waving fingers across faded paperback pages. Bright pink feet stick out of a dinosaur blanket – Toy Story pajamas on. All is dark otherwise.

I'm lost. Lost in the latest book that caught my eye in the library, or sitting on Dad's shelf. I touch the pages as delicate as a detective, hot on a new lead, thumbing through manila folders and ink spots.

I try my best to imagine strange, new faces for each character introduced. Once I do, they live on more than the page. They live with me now. They ask me for sage advice and directions back home and about all my secrets. And I tell them everything. I invite them to take a seat on my bed – and sneak them an Oreo from downstairs, and a spare action figure from my brother’s dresser.

I read the last page the slowest, with a surgeon's care, covering up the final passage with a sweaty palm. Chills flood down my back, erupting like cannon fire. I hold the book now, checking creases and frayed yellowed pages to see how far I'd come. To see how far we'd come together.

Those sleeps were the deepest, most peaceful ones. Where worlds would materialize – emerging like sandcastles on shorelines in my dreams. I fell in love with reading, and fell quickly, hard, fast. I began to understand it, to understand her, deeper than I could ever hope to explain.

Reading.

Reading.

Reading.

Reading is escapism, but rigorous self-examination.

Reading is solitary, but one of life's most communal forms of connection.

Reading is making friends appear out of thin air from coffee drops and oil stains and dust hiding in book folds from forgotten worlds.

Perhaps you feel the same…

In vetting your reading list, that precious bandwidth, that sacred draining sand dial, be as diligent as a sentry, but leave room for serendipity.

If a book calls your name from the top shelf of a bookstore, edges grazing dusted ceiling – accept that call as doctrine. As a sign, a crusade. Ascend rusted ladder as if it were leading to heaven.

Because it is. I promise it is.

Every book, every story, when sewn together with the right soul makes a harmony so sweet that butterflies pause, angels halt, birds perch. To watch, to see, to witness human lungs filling with the breath of God. Emoting, enacting the most medicinal act of man – a shared tale, a warm hand on a shaking shoulder, an intimate look into the thoughts of another. Thoughts so important that family could wait, work could wait, friends could wait, obligations could wait – making room for a stranger, making room for you, to share this moment. To share it with the writer, as she taps away at a keyboard with the marching orders of a drum major.

Reading.

Reading.

Reading.

And so I return to my old friends as often as I can, my worn-down paperbacks, my dog-eared portals. Lava lamps, transformed to IKEA lamps. Dinosaur blanket, turned to pinstripes and gray. I’m lost. Lost in a purity from planets unknown. Untainted.

Pure.

Pure.

Pure.