Imagining a Place

In celebration of Independent Bookstore Day

I keep imagining a place. It is a place I must build with my own two hands. It is a place that is tiny in this world yet big in the immediate vicinity. It is a refuge of sorts. A tiny stage for education and entertainment and enlightenment. A place to transcend reality while simultaneously illuminating it. A place for the quiet stillness of music and the dance of heartfelt visual excitement.

I imagine children laughing and adults applauding. I see plants and animals and flowers and pervasive art. I hear stories told and melodies performed and I even see an occasional mime. I can smell incense burning and coffee brewing and after the sun goes down I can smell night-blooming jasmine.

I can even hear the mesmerizing sound of a small waterfall. I hear the mesmerizing sound of soft muffled human chatter. I hear the clinking of glasses and an occasional cough. Occasionally, there is the sound of a meowing cat.

I smell the intoxicating aroma of old books, each with a world to be entered upon opening. I hear the soft creak of wooden floors. I feel the sensuous touch of a human hand as it turns the pages of a book. I sense the electricity those pages send through those hands.