may favor obscure brainy aptitudes in you and a love of the past so blind you would venture, always securing permission, into the back library stacks, without food or water because you have a mission: to find yourself, in the regulated light, holding a volume in your hands as you yourself might like to be held. Mostly your life will be voices and images. Information. You may go a long way alone, and travel much to open a book to renew your touch.
From The Second Blush by Molly Peacock. Copyright © 2008 by Molly Peacock. Reprinted by permission of W.W. Norton. All rights reserved.