The Apiary: come and pollinate
Dear Scenius,
The Apiary is open! We’re awaiting the tramp of your feet up the staircase to this bright space with high hopes and a few tricks up its sleeves.
This space, containing 698 books and counting, was designed with you in mind: inspired by your curiosity; your openness to new ideas; your aptitude for seeing connection between many disparate things; your appetite for sharing (knowledge, experiences, food, smiles); your deep engagement; the way your traverse the process of coming to know and unknow; your unquenchable desire to learn.
Think of the books in this space as something like bees — they want to fly around, pause momentarily in different spaces, find the fruitful — that can be pulled out, rearranged, paired with new shelf mates. The books are unordered, because we wanted space for your order, your organisation, your ideas: we want these books, this space, to help you think differently and, if you come in here with a point to prove, we want to thwart your attempts (we know you won’t).
Alongside the heavily laden shelves, we have some spaces that allow books to stand out for a moment. A couple of display shelves top the shorter bookcases, a green shelf downstairs contains a couple of initial collections (a Geoff Klock recommends, and a Black Mountain playlist). There are two pride-of-place face out stands that have been inhabited through the week by different books, but for opening I’m paying homage to two men that you’ll see mentioned a lot in relation to acquisition. Both have special gifts of attention when it comes to knowing what book is right for what person: Danny Sarmiento and Kyle Williams, former colleagues at Housing Works Bookstore. This space is full of connections between people, and we hope will be the start of many more.
Though this has been an intense week, as our first guest Erin rightly said, I’ve been building to this moment for three years. Three years of learning to let go, three years to come to an understanding that the things I let go of and those I say goodbye to have a way of staying in my life, have enriched my todays and laid paths for tomorrows.
I come back to the feeling that this project, every facet of it, is authentically me and I’m thrilled to share that with you. The sun was shining right on this bookish endeavour, this living library.
I hope you find a book you were not looking for and a connection that you didn’t know you needed.
Bianca
