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[cologanin-blog]

It’s my sanctuary, my safe space. It’s the place where I can express and feel my true self with the comfort of knowing another pair of eyes and ears aren’t upon me. I can sing, I can dance, I can act. I’m terrible at all of these things, mind you, but nobody knows because my bedroom is mine and mine alone.

It’s a place I spend a lot of time in. I have a deep bookshelf with the few books I have read and the many more I haven’t, I have my gaming consoles for when friends come over and we want to be at each other’s throats playing Street Fighter V or Mario Kart 8, but most importantly, I have the cat food dishes that attract both of my family pets to my space.

These are my companions who I spend most of my time with, but goddamn, are they ever f’ing messy. For some reason my two cats love to grab food from their bowls and carry it else where in my room to eat. They’d do this multiple times in one session, leaving crumbs and full chunks all over the floor. At first, I was quick to clean after them, but time passes and I get lazy.

If you ever visit my room, know that I’m not the one leaving pebbles of salty, dried meat for you to step on. It’s my damn roommates! 

Prompt #65

Write about a messy area in your home, workplace, or life.

[cologanin-blog]

Prompt: Talk about a place near your house

Books are shared pieces of other people’s minds, the knowledge that they use to implement in either teachings or storytelling. This grips the mind of a reader like five fingers around a rubber stress ball. It uses it’s language for twists and turns that go upside down and inside out, throwing you off a cliff only to take a sharp turn downwards into the endless rabbit hole. It is books that are given care and attention by the author, who pours his non refundable time into each work. This is why even the smallest of used-book stores can become a true temple of knowledge and narratives.

There’s a used bookstore near my house, an urban setting where everything you need to live a happy, healthy life is a half hour walk away. A grocery store next to the video store. A restaurant next to the pharmacy. A public park next to the supercenter. It’s comfortable living, but after a few years, it can become a bit stale knowing everything about these places. I know what’s in the Walmart, I know what’s in the Tim Hortons, I know what’s in the Jumbo Video- the contents inside very rarely change. But it my new-found love for books that I discovered the ever-changing excitement that was the Goodwill Bookstore.

Located next to the grocer, where I worked minimum wage, and the video store to buy video games and movies, I travel to the Bookstore once every week to hunt a newly stocked story I can submerge my mind into. It is here that I would be able to skip paying a premium for each book in a shiny new coat, when I can get the same content for only a few Canadian dollars.

Inside this bookstore, the spaces between the tall, looming shelves are compact and narrow. You could barely fit two people back-to-back within these walls, but that was a design choice to cram as many books as possible into such a small building. Hundreds of books in plain sight, until you turn around to see a couple hundred more. Taking a turn down a new aisle brings you to a different genre, a new set of hundreds of books standing straight up, spines erect like soldiers never to break form or forever be reprimanded.

Natural light shone inside through a large collection of tall windows, curated music played on a small speaker at the checkout desk, and the smell of paper gave the location a sense of community and home. Most patrons there are three to four times my own age, but they’re kind in soul and light in conversation. They are people with history, such as the covers of these books. On the outside they may look weathered and not compelling, but most of the time, such is nowhere near the case. Much like these aforementioned books, to learn about the enriching contents inside of these people’s minds, you need to get to know them and open them up.