One Photo Post {15}

Canon 1N // Portra 400

(Taken before the crate obsession) 

▻ When I moved to this country, I only brought two suitcases and couldn't fit more than 10 books or so. I had to leave some of my favorite books and only brought a few I'd started but hadn't finished, or had just bought. An Object of Beauty stayed behind. So did Harlem is Nowhere and Bob Dylan's Chronicles. All but one of my Adam Langer novels stayed on the shelves, but I brought Joan with me. The first couple of months I was here, I bought books: Blue Nights, Family, A View of Other Windows, and both Heidi Swanson cookbooks. I almost bought countless more but stopped before I got broke. Then in February, I finally signed up for a library card and it's changed my life. I can read whatever I want and still buy film?! 

The reason I hadn't been using the library before I moved here is that there were too few books in English, so I bought them instead, or rather, hoarded them. Space became tight on my shelves. Les places sont chères sur ton étagère, my grandfather would have said. He used to say that a lot when we went to the beach in the summer and we couldn't find a spot to sit. That's how it is in this apartment. Brent has books in boxes in the closet, and as many books as the built-in shelves in the alcove can hold. We have books on the coffee table, desk, dinner table, in the crate by the couch that we use as a side table and on the side tables themselves. Some days, we even have books on the couch. 

▻ Is there a wooden crate craze in Portland? I picked up two more crates at a local vintage store because I needed a bedside table, and was told that they'd been receiving lots of calls about crates. I blame this for the obsession. I was feeling pretty smug when I walked out with the last two crates in the store because I only have room for narrow pieces in this apartment, and crates are perfect. I need room for my books and