LIBRARY, MY MUSEUM OF STORIES:
It’s intriguing how the same windows can be a source of escape in very different way for very different types of people. For some, it’s an escape from their messy head while sitting next to it, witnessing dawn and disassociating completely from the rest of the world. A poet sitting next to this window becomes a source of survival for others, while an artist sitting next to the same window helps others make sense of what they always tried to understand. There have been a few who chose to jump, seeking rest in the lap of the earth. They became a living work of art in their own way, just like Evelyn Francis McHale.
For an artist, the world is nothing but a muse, to wake up and look out for survival through their muse. I enter through the doors of this library, and I can already smell stories behind each brick. I don’t have names for the people here; they are mentioned by different numbers in my journal. They are just another door of muse, waiting to be turned into some form of art. Last week was about number 76, with eye liquefying broken jellyfish desires. He went straight, sat on a chair, and gazed at the far-off sky through the window, figuring out whom to blame. I bet he blamed fate in the end; I can tell when I see eyes like that--I have a knack for it. The 54th one, sitting on the floor, carried the weight of a cheerful (from the outside) teen’s numb body, suspended from the ceiling fan with the noose of hope for afterlife bliss. It seemed that the angel in him had died an unusual death by falling in love with the same demon that once had choked him up. There are ones without names and numbers; it’s just their stories and nothing else. The ones that intrigue me the most are the ones that are scribbled upon my heart and never written.
The number of stories I have collected from this library has exceeded the pages I have in my journal. I am writing this, sitting close to one of the windows, and for once, I want to feel how everyone would have felt while sitting in the same place. I want to know why, what, and how they did what they did. The one who writes, the one who draws, the one who chats, the one who scribbles, the one who reads, the one who wept, and the one who jumps out of it. I want to wear all of them like like a dress to feel what they have been through. But today is not the day; the weather is beautiful, and a cup of coffee would be good. I got up, shrugged off all the thoughts and stories, closed my journal, and headed out for a cup of cold coffee.
