Time heals
People have referred to me as what they would call an old soul. Animals are my biggest love, I love campaigning against unfairness in society and I love the company of books over that of certain people. My mum always told me to be kind, caring and having empathy because not everyone has an easy life. She taught me well. Now, I rest my case about awarding myself such qualities though, as articulating who and what I believe to be, is for others to decide.
The virtue of books
Writing is cathartic, it empties your mind of needless clutter and thoughts that make you feel unhappy, unheard. I started writing as a way to deal with an illness that cannot be cured, but it turned into much more: a passion, a craze. If you write for the right reasons, you add value to your life. If you do not write to get published, and you’re not looking for recognition or fame, then you’re writing because you have to write. You just need to write. You cannot but write. Acknowledgement is nice, but it is not why I sit down with an empty, white page in front of me; it is not my goal. I write because I want to share. Where a painter picks up his brush, I have…
The imperfection of books
An old book is lying next to me, and it begs me to pick it up and read it. The imperfections of it make me feel as if this book has lived, and that it wants to be cherished for a long time to come. The cover is wrinkled, the pages discoloured and I sense that a lot of time thinking about the content has happened. It is beginning to have that old book scent, the scent only loved by true bibliophiles. It makes me want to revisit my old library, imperfect because all available space has been filled by other books, yet cherished because I know every corner of the library and what hides in them. The old, creaking seats I used to sit in, to fall under another book’s…
Haunting Joyce
Words. Letters strung together to form sentences filled with thoughts, ideas and emotions. I thrive on them, books and communication in general included. I am a true bibliophile. After library studies, I ended up working in libraries for years before moving to Ireland. Books were my life as a kid, a teen, a young adult and they are still my life right now. I cannot begin to guess how many books I have read or how many I handled while working in a library and each one was special. According to Wikipedia, a bibliophile is someone who “loves to read, admire and collect books, often amassing a large and specialized collection. Bibliophiles do not necessarily want to possess the books they love; an alternative would be to admire them in old libraries.”…
Old Library, Trinity College
© Willeke Van Eeckhoutte and Ireland, Multiple Sclerosis & Me, 2011-2012. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Willeke Van Eeckhoutte and Ireland, Multiple Sclerosis & Me with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
The stalker called MS
In my job I often had to do “root cause analysis” assessments on what went wrong with a certain account and how we could “cure” it again. I miss the term “root cause analysis” and I thought I’d do a one on myself, or my life. What the heck, it’s not like I have anything better to do on another dreary summer’s day in Ireland! I suspect that my illness, the incredibly annoying stalker called Multiple Sclerosis, entered my system through a back door in the 1990s. I have to go back when I worked in a library and I was having the time of my life, so it couldn’t have come at a worse time. I had a period of extreme fatigue and it turned out to be glandular fever…
Welcome to the book fetish club!
“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” (Joseph Brodsky) There’s no certainty in life anymore. You can lose your job… just like that; you can be so stressed your heart starts beating much too fast or you can end up in fights even when you tried so hard to avoid having words. But then… there’s your bookcase. That tall, sturdy oak piece of furniture that holds secrets, explains wars, teaches you a foreign language, helps you relax or take you to some imaginary world you wished you could live in. I can sit in my living room, bedroom or any other place where I have books lying around and just look at those books. Enjoy their silence even when their characters scream for…
