It was important to my parents that we also have a library at home. After years of moving around, including across continents, when we finally settled in the house where my parents still live today, an entire room was set aside to be the library. It was tremendously impractical with our family of eight, with everyone doubling up to fit in the limited space. Arguments, fights, friendships, alliances, and temporary allegiances were all part of the pressure of that closeness and lack of privacy. The use of another bedroom would have alleviated this pressure, but my parents refused that possibility. The room was the library and that was that. […]
I never defined myself by reading – to be honest, I still spent most of my time playing soccer or causing trouble – nor did I need it to be a way for me to see myself and my experiences reflected. That was fine when it did so, but more important to me is the way it expanded my world. My real world and its ideas, and then the imagined worlds and their ideas as well.
I can’t ever recall my parents demanding that we read, or spend any amount of time in the library to compete with other kids or to better ourselves. The library just had to exist and be available so that we could use it whenever we wanted. The rest was up to our imaginations and personal desires. The library door was always open – we only had to walk in. […]
I needed to be surrounded, everywhere that I stayed, with these books that were doors to endless worlds. I needed the ones that I hadn’t read, and the ones that I might not ever get to read, much more than I did the ones that I had. Those books were the unknown, the unexplored dark forests – they both comfort and thrill me with the possibility that one day I might open them up and find myself among new monsters, friends, adventures, and tragedies. Even if that opening never happens, that it might happen is enough. […]
Sometimes when I’m going through a phase of exhaustion or alienation, I imagine an escape the same way that some people imagine running away to a farm or to a small town where they can live modestly with their friends or family. This is my runaway fantasy: not to move towards the margins of the world, but to build a great library. A great library in the village that I’m from, in a small town by the water, in Marseille, in New York, anywhere. A library that doesn’t demand anything, as the best libraries usually don’t. One that is simply present as part of life, where I and anyone else can go sleep, play, read, or do nothing but let the hours pass. A library like the one that nurtured me at home.