the smell of old

It was on my hands, for a while, even after I'd washed them. I went to a quasi-local library/repository, to look at a book. A conceptual placeholder, really, to come to contextualize all I plan on seeing in the UK whilst there in just under two weeks for just over two weeks. So odd that it's become a place to visit rather than a place I simply was. There's much grief there, still, unexcavated and undiscussed. Far more horrifying, though, was the realisation that I hadn't looked at an old book in _years_. That I'd considered images and microfilms and copious notes from years past, but the actual smell of the old, the handling of the old, well, it predates actually finishing the degree. Meaning it's been _years_. I got all anxious and shit about getting my eye in, etc., but, insert bicycle-riding analogy here. Various vagaries, and I got only 2 hours or so with the codex, but it was enough to tell me it's worth revisiting on the other side of the England trip. And to prompt the thinking, along with a certain horror about how much research I could do, truly, before writing the book, rather than scraping along with what I've done so far. The flip side, of course, is that I started working on one particular author in Summer 1999, and it'd be nice to get my book out before that hits 2009. Oxford! London! Mebbe Cambridge and Gloucester! (Lowinger Maddison, I'm looking at you, you churlish fuck. I've wanted that one page from that one book for almost 3 years now.) OK, drowned the post-book blues what with the movies and the booze. Spring break, right? Beach tomorrow, grading on Friday. Live a little, bitch - you might never have a tan again.....