What You Are Looking for is in the Library

by Michiko Aoyama

Plants have work to do above and belowground, and their work in one area complements the other. Maybe it’s the same with having an office job and running a store. Is that what Yasuhara is doing? What if I could do it too? But how do I combine them? That is the question.

Yasuhara places his hands on the table in front of him and clasps them together. “Ryo, let me ask, why do you want to open an antique shop? Not just to be surrounded by antiques, surely—why open a shop?”

Taking her needle out of the Honeydome box, Ms. Komachi continued: “The good thing about felting is that you can start again halfway through. Even after your project begins to take shape, you can easily change direction along the way if you feel that you want to make something different after all.” “Oh, I see. So it’s possible to make something other than what you originally set out to do.

“Singles are envious of those who are married, and married couples envy those with children, but people with children are envious of singles. It’s an endless merry-go-round. But isn’t that funny? That each person should be chasing the tail of the person in front of them, when no one is coming first or last. In other words, when it comes to happiness nothing is better or worse—there is no definitive state.” Madam Mizue took a sip of water. “Life is one revelation after another. Things don’t always go to plan, no matter what your circumstances. But the flip side is all the unexpected, wonderful things that you could never have imagined happening. Ultimately it’s all for the best that many things don’t turn out the way we hoped. Try not to think of upset plans or schedules as personal failure or bad luck. If you can do that, then you can change, in your own self and in your life overall.”

It was a reissue: proof that this book was beloved and still in demand. The knowledge warmed me. Books, too, could be reborn. I thought of who might pick up this book and how they might react to it.

People aren’t astonished by airplanes anymore. They’re an everyday sight. A convenience of civilization that everybody knows and accepts. But only one hundred and sixty years ago, people in Europe were in no doubt that it was God who had made all creatures on earth, in exactly the form they were then. They had never looked any different and never would. People really did believe that salamanders were created from flames, and the bird of paradise was a messenger from paradise. That’s why Darwin was reluctant to publish his theory. He was afraid of being shot down, for having an idea that didn’t fit with the times and environment he lived in.