French la Vie

There is a bookshelf in my house that doesn’t have books to read. Most friends walk past without a second glance.

To be fair, it lives in a unlit corner — From a distance, it looks like a long, tired shelf holding up dusty, forgotten books.

Because those books?
They aren’t the kind I read.
They are the kind I bought because the covers flirted with me, and the first page with their little engravings, and then — well — then I closed them and put them on my bookshelf. They are my antiques, my mysteries. I don’t always know what subjects they’re about. “Something historical,” I say when people ask, waving my hand vaguely, hoping they won’t ask more. Some of them might be sermons. Some might be scientific treatises. One is probably a letter to the King. I wouldn’t know. I fell in love without bothering to read them.

The strange part is the tiny things tucked between the books, behind the books, on top of the books — they do not draw attention. A stack of Tarot cards, played so often they are entirely covered in scotch tape. A fragment of a wax flower wedding wreath. A bald Santon, staring out silently. A violin without strings.

They seem perfectly content in their hiding places, tucked into companionship among the unread books.

In the dimness, the bookshelf becomes something like a memory cabinet — a gathering place for all the odd things that choose to stay with me. Nothing grand. Nothing valuable. Just a little colony of forgotten whatnots, and worn covers, living together in the dark.

Every now and then, I pause in front of it — not to read, not to dust, but to simply look.
And in that moment, the whole shelf seems to glow, just faintly, as if pleased to have been remembered.

These are little things that found their way to me through my thirty‑some years of antiquing in France. I’ve sold plenty of things, but somehow these little bits and pieces just stayed with me. They are not valued monetarily, just because they seem to appeal to the little romance inside of me with antiques.