Good morning, friends. It’s Sea Library’s birthday today. Although it’s not easy to draw a line in time saying this is where you started, it was June 4, six years ago when I publicly announced, come, borrow, these books are yours, too. My doors are open.
Those who follow this weird and beautiful library, will know how surprisingly my life changed ever since. Six years mark also some of the most special friendships. With particular humans and particular books. It’s hard to imagine it’s not more than six. Who was I before that? How I breathed without the sea on my mind 24/7? Without all these books? “Remember / First to possess his books; for without them / He’s but a sot, as I am, nor hath not / One spirit to command” (Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”).
With one year old Nemo beside me, my first dog, this summer I’m planting my first garden. Entering the seventh year of being a sea librarian, everything is different again, but – anciently the same. Sometimes I’m suspicious of borrowing the naughty and nice proportions from the sea. Coming and going with tides, but never leaving. Always here. Never the same.
Right now with my fingertips black and green from planting flowers and discussing my plans with garden snails, I’m a little bit tired of shouting out loud how cool these sea books are. You know there is nothing better than good books about the sea that give you a different eyesight and a reason to walk down to the beach once more. Those who know, somehow find their path to this old wooden house (or my inbox). And comments turn into letters. Visits transform into friendships. Stories like seaweed tangle us all together. Is there anything better than that?
The Sea Library has the most wondrous circle of friends and readers. You write, you knock, you say things that mean a lot to me. We share the passion of not understanding the sea after years of reading and thinking about it. Of loving it madly. Of swimming and watergazing.
A couple of days ago I received this notebook from France from my very best friend. The Sea Library is a coral reef, growing day by day, month by month, year by year in an underwater world of literature. A library on the brink of imagination. Just like the sea.
Happy birthday, my dear dear Sea Library.
Yours,
Anna x
Sea Library 