Wild Sovereign Development Site

Tag: kinship

  • antaquarium

    When I went to Copenhagen on my own it was cold and windy and there were times I felt very lost and alone. When I felt lost and alone I would take refuge in one of two places: the library, which has free wifi and a cafe and people clustered around low tables on Eames chairs, earnestly chatting; or this antiquarian bookshop I found, labyrinthine and lined to the ceiling in leather books, which has been made over into a student caff. There are little tables tucked under the shelves and in corners. They make a very rich hot chocolate and they serve cheap food. I loved to sit in there out of the wind and just gaze and gaze, letting people’s conversations filter through me, feeling how the venerable books stand shoulder to shoulder, a phalanx of minds, and how their massed presence like the presence of noble clouds grounded and rooted me with a kind of magic spell. I grew sleepy and the world seemed much kinder. My ears blurred. I sat for hours as though underwater.

     

  • shop of owls

    shop of owls

    Went into my favourite bookshop today, which has owls carved of different woods stashed in all its corners. For the first time I noticed the sign on the back of the door: Antiquarian shops are places of inner peace. There followed a series of red circles crossed by red lines, like no-through-road signs for traffic: no headphones. No mobile calls. No shouting.

    However I was so delighted I broke the rules immediately, by shouting. The proprietor, who is always barefoot or wearing a pair of rubber thongs & who drinks at one of the cafes I love, had got up from his desk at the back of the shop to say hello. “Inner peace!” I called over, beaming. “No mobile phones! I love this!”

    He came down between the stacks of books which seem both wobbly and solid. “Most people like the hectic,” he suggested (it makes more sense in German). “Never stopping for a minute.”

    “To never need to think!” I said. “To never… never die, right?” He nodded his head and we gazed at each other with a feeling, or so it seemed to me, on this one subject of utter likemindedness. Us & the owls. Hoo hoo.

    H2O HoL shop of owls