please, just one corner and fictional chaos
an adult woman dreams of a reading nook
Eek, Happy Sunday to you! I think there’s something wonderfully conventional about the act of deliberate escapism on a gloomy and rainy Sunday afternoon. This is a post-script addition (odd, I know) but here I am, having achieved the very thing I write about — a temporal nook. Not in some Pinterest-perfect bohemian way with cascading plants and artisanal coffee, but a little more like wrapped in a baby blue fleece blanket, coffee-fueled and contentedly avoiding my half done to-do list while Russian aristocrats unfold their dramas across my lap (Thank you Tolstoy).
A fun drinking game with whatever beverage accompanies you today: Take a shot every time you read the word ‘nook’.
At the moment, I am reading three books at three very different paces.
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman - god I love British deadpan humour, especially by women.
Design Systems by Alla Kholmatova - in love with the methodical case studies, makes me use my brain the ways I want to.
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy - on page 4 and at the moment have not many opinions other than that I have learnt many new words already.
Each one of these skillfully invite me into their worlds of stories, ideas and narratives while I can escape mine for just a little bit. These books fragments my attention in the most haphazard way. My brain becomes a kind of literary switching station, moving between sharp wit and methodical thinking and expansive world-building. What more could a girl want?
The to-do list can wait a little. Anna Karenina has been waiting since 1878, but she's finally got my attention on this rainy Sunday, and that feels like exactly the right kind of priority. I've been seeing myself in these paintings lately. Kuehl's woman perched on a barstool, lost in her book. Benner's nude figure, beautifully human in her simple existence with pages spread before her. But mostly Casas, in the woman sprawled across the couch, thighs supporting her book, armrest cradling her neck.
That looks like bliss to me. That looks like exactly where I want to be.
I actually think it started with the diffuser. Or rather, it started with the scent called "Ocean Dream" that we found in a collection of essential oils towed away in a cabinet drawer. As a self proclaimed aromatherapy expert, I took in a deep breath from my belly and studied the notes of fragrance. I landed on: “dreamy,” “mornings at the beach,” and something else I couldn’t quite place—some elusive, third note I’ve never smelled before and likely never will again. Those are, by the way, extremely legitimate fragrance terms. However, all I do know is that it smells like a dream of one’s own, sometimes like possibility, but mostly just homespun and cozy. Maybe a little bit morning mist and clean sheets and the kind of contentment I imagine comes from having your life together enough to own matching furniture.
The diffuser now sits on the wooden desk facing my bed, which is not quite a nook but aspires to be one. Sometimes I catch myself arranging things around it—a half-dead succulent, a stack of books I intend to read, a mug that’s always refilling with freshly brewed coffee.
I wouldn’t call it a revelation, but something did become clear. This fantasy isn't really about the nook and a coffee bar by the window. It's really about the permission to disappear. In my imagined reading corner, I would be unreachable. No notifications, no emails, no obligations, no performance of productivity, no expectations. Just me and someone else's carefully crafted sentences, someone else's problems neatly contained within the margins of a page. I would annotate thoughtfully, not because I'm supposed to but because the words move me enough to write out what I felt about them. I would understand metaphors without googling them. I would close my eyes when I feel them welling up, or audibly gasp and move my hand across my gaping mouth, or even reach out for a notebook to make one of my favourite quick flow charts for it “to all make sense out of my head”. I would be the kind of person who says things like "the prose is luminous" and mean it.
My day would begin with no alarms. As routine calls for it, it’s me in my big t-shirt, no pants and funky socks, that greet this Sunday morning. I'd slip into this space around 11 AM, when the light does that thing where it makes everything look like it belongs in a film. Golden. Speckled. Warm. The plants would be lush and thriving because nook-me would have figured out the thing that keeps green things from dying on me. She is crowned the greatest Plant Mother of all time. The air would carry that specific ocean dream scent (still can't figure out what's in it). I'd open my book to yesterday's page, and the corners have not been dog-eared but instead neatly bookmarked. (Thank you, nook-me). And I will rejoice just a little, because it turns out pleasure, when unqualified, feels like a small protest.
I'd switch to podcasts before meal times. The ones with women talking about the world or their lives or some self help ideology, it doesn't really matter which, while I tell myself I'm going to whip up something proper for a big lunch, but honestly the grand cooking plans would dissolve into takeout boxes and the kind of baked goods that I allow myself against my better judgement. I have known that I’m not one with a sweet tooth, but these days there's something about lounging and reading past your bedtime that makes you reach for whatever's within arm's reach. What’s mine at the moment, you ask? The cranberry and white chocolate cookies that have become my accomplice in the willingness to ruin my sleep schedule for someone else's sentences and stories. Not a guilty pleasure I tell myself, simply a pleasure.
Right, I’ll stop romanticizing my sugar cravings now. In my fantasy Sunday world, the hours would slip away without me noticing, which is honestly the whole point. In my daily life, it feels like I am constantly doing that thing where I check the time every five minutes like I'm being timed on an exam. But in my nook, I'd disappear so completely into someone else's mess that I wouldn't come up for air until the light started going orange-golden. I'd look up, slightly dazed, to find it's 7 PM and I've just spent an entire day being deliciously, wonderfully useless. To dilly dally away the Sunday. Hours wasted by other people's fictional problems while mine wait patiently in the real world. It's the most selfish thing I can think of, and I want it desperately.
Cue the moment of transition. The reluctant return to living like a human adult, which honestly feels like being asked to leave a party you're actually enjoying for once (Rude! I was having fun). But I wouldn’t sulk, I would simply mark my place with a proper bookmark, not an IndiGo boarding pass or a receipt from my wallet, and I would stretch like a cat, feeling pleasantly stiff from hours of delicious stillness while the world inside my mind just went through a gazillion transformations. I would look around at my sanctuary I can call my own. It houses a coffee cup. The coffee long gone. My deep red lipstick stains, tragically, isn’t. The fruit bowl that somehow stayed full, and the takeout boxes that are gladly empty, all along the plants that miraculously didn't die under my care (Best Plant Mom) and I would feel something I rarely allow myself to experience: pure satisfaction with my own company, no phone needed, no background noise required, just me and the sound of rain against the window like the world's most perfect white noise machine. Beautiful.
Not exactly wisdom, but something close enough. I tell myself that I don't need a perfect nook to disappear into someone else's life for hours at a time. I could read right now, sitting on my bed with my laptop balanced on my knees and my phone buzzing with the kind of notifications that make you feel important and empty at the same time. I could make better coffee with the equipment I already have (my cousin welcomed home a frothing machine), buy a plant and try not to kill it (I have kept a cactus alive for the last nine months), light the candle I've been saving for a special occasion (it isn’t mine but it smells like apple cinnamon) and decide that Sunday afternoon is special enough, because really, what's more special than choosing to waste time so beautifully?
So I will bring my reading nook to life soon, but until then, I'll keep my ocean dream diffuser on the windowsill, my stack of unread books within arm's reach, and my coffee in whatever mug is clean, because the nook exists, imperfectly, wherever I decide to create it.
Thank you for making it this far. This is filled with run-on sentences and verbose explanations about a simple dream of mine, but I wish for you to get lost in my words for a little while too. My words will find you in the lulls of your day soon enough. But until then — drink your coffee (one cup only), wear your big t-shirt and read away your afternoons. XOXO
Quick Fix: the subject in Casas painting does NOT in fact have the book resting on her thigh, I can’t remember why I misinterpreted it that way but I think this makes it all the more better. A woman, simply lounging, book closed.
love it love it love it