The Imaginary Librarian

“I might walk vast expanses
of earth and always be beginning
and I love beginning
or could learn
to love it.”
― S. Jane Sloat

“I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walking

“Go outside. Don’t tell anyone and don’t bring your phone. Start walking and keep walking until you no longer know the road like the palm of your hand, because we walk the same roads day in and day out, to the bus and back home and we cease to see. We walk in our sleep and teach our muscles to work without thinking and I dare you to walk where you have not yet walked and I dare you to notice. Don’t try to get anything out of it, because you won’t. Don’t try to make use of it, because you can’t. And that’s the point. Just walk, see, sit down if you like. And be. Just be, whatever you are with whatever you have, and realise that that is enough to be happy.
There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“6 months, 2 weeks, 4 days,
and I still don’t know which month it was then
or what day it is now.
Blurred out lines
from hangovers
to coffee
Another vagabond
lost to love.

4am alone and on my way.
These are my finest moments.
I scrub my skin
to rid me from
you
and I still don’t know why I cried.
It was just something in the way you took my heart and rearranged my insides and I couldn’t recognise the emptiness you left me with when you were done. Maybe you thought my insides would fit better this way, look better this way, to you and us and all the rest.
But then you must have changed your mind
or made a wrong
because why did you
leave?

6 months, 2 weeks, 4 days,
and I still don’t know which month it was then
or what day it is now.
I replace cafés with crowded bars and empty roads with broken bottles
and this town is healing me slowly but still not slow or fast enough because there’s no right way to do this.
There is no right way to do this.

There is no right way to do this.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving