I am a book person. That isn't so unusual. If you're reading this you are likely a book person too. So you won't find it weird when I tell you that on occasion I have been known to buy a book for reasons other than a cracking good read. Sometimes it's the title, sometimes it's the cover and sometimes it's the paper.
There is something about a weighty paper with a deckled edge that adds to the mystique of a brand new hardback. The ragged edges are akin to Dickensian tales of woe or ghost stories that keep you up at night with eyes wide open in the dark; wondering whether or not the thing you heard was only the wind. A Victorian Gothic printed on plain white stock, shiny and pristine, just isn't as appealing as a hefty tome enveloped in lovely mottled end papers.
Paper junkies like myself are a sensory bunch. We appreciate the properly foxed pages of an old atlas, the smell of a 'hot off the presses' print and the feel of a handmade journal. We enter bookstores and sniff the air inhaling the scent of ink on the page. We read and we write. And ,if we're honest, hope against hope that one day our own words will be wrapped up in thick paper sandwiched between hard covers. At least I do.
It seems ironic that someone who has such affection for paper would use a medium that is paperless. But then again the reason any of us write a word is because we have something to say. In a certain twist of logic this virtual venue makes me and my words real. So I will write and offer up a morsel or two, a poem now and then, some food for thought and hope that it will matter. Come back and see me.
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