I'm very pleased to finally have my own bookshelf and writing table on my room! It was a dream come true, alhamdulillah, after so many years of waiting, finally, my books and other reading and writing materials no longer need to be filed away inside the two boxes. They arrived yesterday morning, as the sun had risen for a new day.
To be truly honest, most of my personal money if not spent on art instruments, are spent on scourging through books wherever I go, from brand new copies to used ones. But despite of that, I think so many times before availing them, and the reasons why I need to have them. During my teenage years, I was very interested on classical literature (both prose and poetry) and science, and of course taking much consideration on the content and in what way they could help me not only on my perspective and mode of thinking, but also on my approach to life. Being an avid loner who loves to explore and learn a lot about life, I spend most of my days reading books and when I go outside to see the world, I become overwhelmed and awed because I see it always in a brand new light much of what I understand from what I read. Sometimes, I fancy writing down my thoughts as I stare out of the car window whenever I travel, and think how they could in one way or the other, reach out to others who share the same visions or images that are built on my mind. But I have to admit that reading is a double-edged sword which needs a lot of critical thinking and not merely blind acceptance.
The subject and the content of what we read must be fully and carefully chosen, because all forms of writing can have negative or positive effects on a reader, especially on a receptive / fully-open reader. Some contain extremely corrupt and dangerous content that can poison and eventually destroy a person's mind and life. There are some books which contain honeyed words which are extremely pleasing to the reader, but they have an undertow or a hidden meaning which results to corrupting people's thoughts, feelings, ideologies, beliefs, and eventually their entire being. But at the same time, there are also those which aim at improving and helping people better understand so many facets of life and apply those ideals practically in everyday life - and thus serving noble purposes. The written word is thus, like any other instrument endowed and entrusted to a person, needs to be used responsibly - not for the interest of the author or individual per se, but on the meaning and purpose it truly serves.
The shelf and the writing table are set, but I'm still thinking the kind of finishing touches I'll apply on them. Wood varnish or white with pink paint accents? I much prefer a light, pine-colored wood varnish, but white and pink paint is so girly, right? Wood varnish is much more timeless it seems, with an accent I can grow old with (or never)...
The other concern I've been quite fussing about is what to do with the other copies I have, the fiction ones. Back in the day, as what I was talking about a while earlier, I was fond of fiction. But I realized that as I grew older, the content of those fiction left extremely negative effects on me, because they have bad hidden messages: deceit and alien values and practices not suitable to the way of life of Islam. Will I burn them as what I had done to my scratch papers or will they remain for the meantime? How about the newspapers I collected? Sell them away? This is such a dilemma...
That's it for now.
