Stop and Smell the People

Travelblog: A beautiful mess…

Destination: Lexington, Virginia

While Anna and I were in Lexington we happened into a store that stopped me in my tracks. I walked through the door, my jaw dropped open and quietly mouthed the word, “WOW!”

That’s not something I’ve aver said when I walk into a bookstore. Bookstores are sterile to me. They’re cookie-cutter blah right down to their knowledgeless workers. “I’m looking for a book by C. S. Lewis called “A Grief Observed.” “Yes sir. (tapping on a computer keyboard) um… Cecil who again?” Sigh.

This bookstore is only about 50 feet deep and 3o feet wide but it felt like it was breathing. The

room was alive.

I pulled my camera out and started snapping pictures. When I turned to look at the woman sitting at the cash register she was grinning ear-to-ear. Her name is Marysue and she owns this treasure chest called, “The Bookery.” Ask Marysue about a C.S. Lewis book and she’ll  rattle off a dozen titles.

Even if you can’t read this bookstore is interesting just for it’s geometry, topography and oddity. I love spacial relationships within rooms. Call it ambiance or a vibe or whatever you want, it matters. Ask Walt Disney. No one better understood the geometry and topography of rooms or

tiki huts or tree houses or small worlds. But all those magical Disney places were studied and planned and created and reshaped and re-planned and reshaped and voila! A Magical Kingdom.

The Bookery is magical quite by accident. It’s one of those rare places that just is. It happened one book at a time over a period of two decades. There’s no voila! to this place. It’s not sudden. It’s old and fantastic and improbable.

Marysue Forrest has accidentally created this living breathing maze from a place of pure love. Marysue LOVES books. Books are her life. Reading is her peace. The Bookery is her dream.

Read on… MR