On one physical level, the only way to get (most) all of the books onto the main shelves was to switch from vertical shelving to horizontal stacking. I’m not sure how functional horizontal stacks will be for a semi-regularly referenced library. It works best when there are many books by a particular author or in a subject matter. It also means that the larger books, which may or may not be the books I’m more likely to consult, form the base of the stacks—consulting them will be like that magic trick where one pulls a tablecloth out from underneath a set of dishes. Hey Presto!
The fiction paperbacks have, alas, been double-shelved on some separate modular shelves. I am going to see if I can purchase some additional planks and brackets and increase the linear shelf space.
There’s no rest for the wicked, however. Now that the books (and the banker’s boxes they were stored in) have been put away, I have to move onto restoring the bedroom closets, which will involve finding brackets for the very long closet rod and installing them before I can transport the costume and prop department lurking in the North Bedroom and Main Hall closet into the new bedroom closet.
It also means figuring out where some other objects are going to live. There were a number of tchotchkes interspersed throughout the books and I’m resisting the urge to return them to the shelves. The chief of these is my Writers of the Future award from 2006, which inspires the joke about the person who goes to a costume party as a Gifted Child, and when asked “What are you supposed to be?”, replies, “Oh, I was supposed to be so many things.” Mark has already moved the trophy, which is a sharp prism of about seven pounds of acrylic, from one end of the modular fiction shelves to another end, where it will be less likely to kill me when The Big One hits and the trophy does a Sword of Damocles impression.
Unfortunately, I can’t make the closet in our new bedroom behave like a TARDIS, and there simply isn’t room for the Old Burridge Chest of Drawers and Portable Stonehenge and my clothes. And my Doctor Who Scarf. And the giant, wool, double-breasted Pegasus Ranger army greatcoat. And my necklaces, talismans, and amulets. And the crowns (plural). Or the file cabinet of critiqued manuscripts.
Or the banner with a full length Cicely Mary Barker Cornflower Fairy on it. I like it because it reminds me of my Anglophile Aunt Margot, and because I like cornflowers; and the over-the-top pose of the young male fairy with his hands to his cheeks and one leg bent up screams, “OMG! You want to go to the fancy dress ball with me?!” Whether it’s Too Much Old Lady or Too Much Twee I can’t say—but it’s so “Too Much” that it’s funny. I’m not sure why Mark hates it and calls it scary. Okay, we did hang it up behind the door of the bedroom just before The Child's temporary return between college academic terms in a decor move that Mark calls "weaponized;" so there may be a residual Grandma-Jumpscare element involved.
Mark also does not care for the large, sixty-year old, touristy temple rubbing of a bunch of bright blue Hindu women playing instruments. I’m sure my parents purchased it on their travels overseas when they were sophisticated almost-thirty-year-old Americans in 1962. It used to be a central image in the downtown house I lived in before I was seven—I thought the figures were pointy-eared extraterrestrial ?women? wearing space (or diving) helmets, with alien devices; avatars of celestial mystery casting a spell; or possibly space sea-monkeys having a party. What I took for either a lap-sized crystal ball or else some sort of space communication device in one woman’s lap in real life is actually a tambour, seen drum-head on. The air-tubes connecting their helmets to the geometric space suits that I saw as a kindergartener are actually chunky necklaces draped strategically over bare, spherical breasts. Perhaps it is Kama-Sutra-adjacent. I suppose I find it compelling and oddly comforting in a “the party’s still going” kind of way; Mark thinks it’s poorly executed.
Finally, there’s the small bronze unicorn bust on a pink marble plinth. I bought it when I first moved to Eugene to live with Mark. It’s fine art that doesn’t look like a bunch of scrap metal and gears glued together, nor does it look like a twee citizen of the Glass Menagerie. Nor is it Eugene Hemp Macrame with Driftwood and Beads. I’ve always thought it might be fun to make the piece a gnomon for a sundial board, but mostly it’s lived here and there in the house in the shelves or by the Portable Stonehenge or on the mantle or the dining room table. Apparently Mark doesn’t like it (and never has)… not because it’s nauseatingly cute, but, I think because a gay man owning a cast bronze unicorn bust is fence-sitting in the way a gay man owning a scaled-down replica of Michelangelo’s David or a reproduction of a sexy, Pre-Raphaelite Saint Sebastian isn’t. Also, being just the head and neck, the unicorn is slightly reminiscent of “The Godfather.” (“Nice bookshelves. Shame if something happened to them.”)
When I get a little overwhelmed, I go into the North Bedroom and look at the main, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves: vertical shelving tidily interspersed with horizontal stacks. Dusted. Clean. Accessible and not double-stacked. The hardback novels; the Arthuriana next to the Dion Fortune next to the Ronald Hutton; the gay history running into the gay spirituality; the divination section just beneath the poetry section; the astronomy section and the folklore section and the gardening and herbal section—and along the entire length of the main shelf is the art and the history and the art-history running from the Paleolithic to the Egyptian to the Greek, Roman, and Islamic; to the European Mediaeval and Renaissance; spanning to the Pre-Raphaelites, Escher, Mucha, and the Impressionists; ending with Barbie and Art Deco and New York Gargoyles.
I suppose the books spanning time and space are as close to the TARDIS as I’m going to get.
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