Library of Dreams and the Avenue of Booksellers

Description:	monoprints with stencils. Edition of 20. Many years ago I dreamed about books turning into flowers. I have always loved books, as a reader and a writer, and was delighted by linking the wisdom of books with the beauty of flowers. In my mind this dream created a bridge between libraries and gardens, the vitality and soul force that lives in our literatures and animates the green world. There is a silence in the forest that is not the same as the silence in a room lined with books, and yet it is similar. And the longer you stay in the library or the forest, the more you hear the whispers of others.When I first started using the phrase the Library of Dreams, it seemed to be both substantial and elusive, metaphoric and real. It was wonderful to visit this library where seekers and dreamers, readers and writers from across many times and places meet. A mystic clearinghouse. The view outside the windows change; the size of the rooms seem to shift. I couldn’t tell you how I got there. Had I been dreaming? Was I in the studio? What time zone was I in? how many different schools for souls?Eleven hundred years ago the poet Al-Mutanabbi, a beloved poet in a culture that loves poetry, wrote erudite and courageous poems. For three hundred years, Al Mutanabbi Street, named in his honor, located near the ancient Tigris River, in Central Baghdad was a district of book stalls and book stores, stationery stores, magazine stacks, tobacco shops, coffee and tea houses. Through the centuries the book markets of Al-Mutanabbi Street with their old and new books became a place of intellect and soul, casual and purposeful quests. Some readers meandered through book aisles, others searched through the book tables with eagerness and intensity. Although I have never been to Baghdad, I have seen the book markets of Havanna; I remember the bookstores of Berekley that clustered around the campus 40 years ago. Each in its distinct way an outpost of the Library of Dreams.On March 5, 2007 a car bomb exploded on Al-Mutanabbi Street in central Baghdad. Thirty people died, 100 were wounded. How many books were burned?I have come to know a more painful meaning for this phrase, the Library of Dreams.The Library of Dreams becomes a home for the lost books, the library of lost books, the dream of lost books. The library of dreams shelters burnt books, the forbidden books, found now only through our imaginations and memories. We look forward and back, wonder where we are going, where have we been, we remember the presence, we lament the absence, we whisper prayers of peace. Words burned in the air, leave the ash of lost language, leave whispers of words that no war can erase. As an artist and writer I want to remember the whispers of language that never go away, to remember the presence of what once was there, even after it has been destroyed. Where are we going, where have we been? Will there be books in the library of dreams that can teach us how to unlearn war? Language in the smoke Language in the air. Lost books still flower among the tears under the stars found now only in the library of dreams.
Origin:	2015
Created By:	Gendler, J Ruth
Contributor(s):	Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition
Publisher:	(Berkeley, CA)
Source:	http://iuidigital.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/AMSSH/id/973
Collection:	Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition Collection
Rights:	http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Copyright:	In Copyright
Subjects:	artists book art bookworks

Further information on this record can be found at its source.