PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

I remember how enthusiastic he gets whenever he wants to read a book, and how his eyes open wide whenever he sees such the simple rectangular shape of the book. If I were his sense of smell, I would swear that I would like the smell of old books. If I were his sense of sight, I would affirm that I would like any shadow of any book projected on the table. He tells me with a smile on his face that he has loved books and knowledge since he was a kid. He studied and read on the roof of his house every afternoon until a faint ray of light announced the arrival of the moon and nighttime. He doesn’t like to throw out his books. Instead he keeps them on the bookshelf in order to have them protected like a pearl inside its shell. Whenever he wants to read something, he goes directly to the bookshelf, and because he knows how the books are put in order he doesn’t spend a lot of time searching. I observe his behavior when he’s near the presence of the books, and he seems to be happy in the moment he opens them. Hundreds of small letters written on white paper and elaborated drawings every second page he understands and knows as if they were very old friends. He orders his books according to their size and thickness, but he never orders them according to the color of the cover. At home and in his office, not only are his bookshelfs always full of papers, documents and books, but he also keeps CD’s there of his favorite music. He loves to show me everything he has there, as if to explain to me that if someday I want to see something about his life, I can find almost everything there I want to know. I remember him reading books in front of his bookshelf for hours, and it seemed that his only moments of distraction were when he stood up from his chair to find another book on the bookshelf. He takes care of it as if it was trunk filled with treasures, so he tries to check that every book is placed there, cleaned and organized. My father also takes care of it as if it was a time machine that transports him to the past of what he has read and that will transport him to the future of what he will learn. This wooden shell of a bookshelf will show us my father’s memories and pieces of his whole life written on paper. My father loves books.