Vellichor

the pensive nostalgia and temporality of use bookstores; the feeling evoked by the scents of old books or paper.

Bucket list, Prague check. There have been so many times in my life when people have told me stories of Prague. A pilgrimage, a love affair, a bucket list, a bookstore, or of the sounds. I have also seen it in movies, or read about it in books which transformed me to a place far away that someday I might get to experience for myself. There was just something that has intrigued me or has had me in awe.

I have felt this way about most of Europe my entire life. Always wanting to see where and how people lived in other cultures and times. I had only been to Sicily and Germany before Prague. It is pure nostagia? The yearning to see antiques being used daily or trying to figure out what they had been used for. The architecture which still takes my breath away, the typewriters and the books.

As we walked in the the bookstore the vellichor enveloped me. It was like I was in the movies, or inside one of those books I had read. My 60th birthday present was an all expense paid trip to Berlin, Germany. From there he had planned out all of these side trips and excursions for us over a 15 day period at the ending of the summer of month of August. The thought that he had put into finding the perfect AirBNB, for us to stay, to the food we ate or made was marvelous. The time for writing was as we both filled journals, and notepads with words and feelings that I did not think I could describe.

The bookstore was 3 stories, one story below and one story about the main floor. It contained used books in many languages, typewriters were scattered about as art installations, some behind glass while others just as if the author had just went into another room to brew more tea and would be right back. Album covers, sheet music scattered about. I could look at the pictures that I took but I want to stay focused on the scents around me. My son Macklin, although in the same place having a very different experience I am sure.

My mind goes back to 9th grade and a volunteer job I held. Volunteers of America, in Smithtown, NY over a store I no longer remember, ran by a woman whom I can see her face, remembering somethings but forgetting so much more. There were 2 desks and 2 typewriters both of them were manual, an Olivetti and a Remington. My job was to type out on index cards the needs of the people who called in for help. It was my bosses job to fill those positions with local volunteers in the area. There was also a secretary who used the Olivetti and I was to use the Remington. I remember how my fingers ached after the first few hours. At school I had been trained to use an electric typewriter and the strokes were short. At home my Mom had given me a her old typewriter, that she had won at school. It was a Smith Corona and although it was manual it had much shorter strokes than these and did not make my fingers ache.

The bookstore with the scents of the past that I was in, brought me back to that moment in time. Yet, here I am thousands of miles away in a foreign land, remembering.