There's a momentum in books.. a pacing that includes... the reading along a line... moving down the page... and turning of pages one-by-one. This momentum is what builds a story. This week's book-of-the-week,
The Attic, continues the momentum of last week's book,
Old House. Just as many older homes were added on to as a family grew and years went by... just as new stories were added to the older ones... this week's book exemplifies that transformation and growth.
A second box, shaped like a trapezoid, sits atop the double-hinge box from last week. The new trapezoidal-shaped box with a flip-up lid is covered in paste paper and marbled paper to loosely resemble a rooftop garret.
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| a house of books... |
Open the boxes and the books are stashed inside...
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| Old House and The Attic |
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| tunnel books of the rooms downstairs.. |
The Attic is a little 3 inch by 3 inch stiff leaf book that resembles an old steamer trunk on the spine side and incorporates old fashioned prints, marbled papers, and antique maps within its pages.
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| marbled paper on the cover of The Attic |
Attics are those rooms of the house that seem to hold all sorts of treasures. Piled up, packed up, and hidden in the shadows and dust are mementos and keepsakes that are passed down, kept a lifetime or longer, and lay waiting to rejoin the world someday... somehow.
The Attic incorporates a few of these mementos within it's tiny pages. The mementos include...
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| childhood letters... |
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| and old ticket stub and dried roses from a wedding bouquet... |
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| an embroidered hankerchief... |
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| old photos... |
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| Grandma's quilt top, left unfinished... |
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| maps to far away places... |
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| an old Methodist Hymnal from times gone by |
The Attic is not just a place for remembering by-gone days, but a place for retrieving things we've put aside... to reincorporate them into the present. Like pulling out the tattered and loved family Christmas tree decorations or dragging down the
big suitcase for a vacation trip... or the air mattress for visiting loved ones...
Or even pulling out boxes and boxes (and boxes) of toys so a certain
Little One can play with their daddy's old Ewok Village!
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| looking down on The Attic |
Like all attics,
The Attic is about memory and the commonplace stories that make our lives. It is a treasure trunk of delightful things that take us back to another time while standing solidly in the present. This sort of magic isn't spooky or odd, but as
comfortable as an old pair of shoes and as
comforting as a whiff of long-ago perfume. Oddly, located at the
top of the house... closest to the sun, the clouds, and the stars, attics are somehow
heavenly... in their dark, dank, and dusty sort of way.
