Vellichor

Vellichor, n.: the pensive nostalgia and temporality of used bookstores; the feeling evoked by the scent of old books or paper.

I’m a patron of a landmark used bookstore in Detroit, Michigan called King’s Books. It’s a massive, four-storey building with a parking lot that fits a total of eight cars if all drivers agree to park correctly. I’ve often wondered if the size of the parking lot is an intentional guard over the overall atmosphere of the place. The bookstore demands reverence and a certain deference for all the ages of works that sit within its walls—something an abundance of people and loud voices might diminish. The true entrance is found up a flight of stairs and to the left of the main door, and once you discover your way to it, the sheer volume of rows of shelves, hallways, and stacked books you’re met with is breathtaking. You immediately forget what you might have come for until you’re handed a map guiding you through each hallway, room, and floor. Even then, you can’t help but get pulled into some category of book you never knew you needed. Last time I was there, it was a room full of art books about obscure artists that drew me in.

I imagine King’s Books holds a special place in my life because I met two of my greatest mentors in similar venues. My first significant memory of a used bookstore was in its musty basement where I was perusing religious titles—not because I knew what I was looking for but because I was drawn to the spirituality that existed outside my own time and culture. I remember running my finger across author names and pretentious titles when the faded title on a broken binding caught my eye—Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas Merton. If I could have given a title to my own life at that moment in time, it would have conveyed this exact sentiment. Any opinion I uttered seemed mere conjecture compounded by the guilt of inaction, and I was feeling deeply lost. I bought the book on the title alone and took it home to my university dorm room. I never would have imagined the thoughts and questions of a midcentury Trappist monk from Kentucky would resonate so deeply. Merton’s willingness to question the religiosity that dwelled within his own monastery walls coupled with his deep love and respect for the laity who lived outside them was captivating. He wrote on the absurdity of his fellow monks who thought their cows would produce more milk if they listened to sacred music. (They didn’t.) When he considered the life of his chauffeur, a townsman who lived nearby, he wrote on the sacredness of belonging to one another regardless of the path each has chosen to follow. Merton questioned the effectiveness of organized protests all the while championing individuals who bravely sought to facilitate change within their own communities. He often acknowledged the complexity of human existence even as he sought to live a life completely removed from modern-day living and cares. His balance of valuing what was sacred and discerning what was merely religious was refreshing, and I quickly found myself searching for Merton's other books. I found his wisdom to be a vital lifeline that guided my thinking and spiritual pursuits every year after. His explanation that true spirituality exists in our ability to see ourselves as belonging to one another while simultaneously detaching ourselves from the man-made things of this world was life-altering for me.

How a middle-aged Catholic priest living in a monastery during the Cold War resonated so profoundly with an evangelical, engaged, 22-year-old girl of the 21st century seems oxymoronic. Yet decades before I was born, someone put words to how spiritual life can enter our daily, physical reality and blazed the trail for all who would come after him. In the days and months before I found his book, I had been searching for such a convening of Heaven and Earth, and Heaven answered my quest through an old monk in a used bookstore. The path I was looking for wasn't new; I simply needed to find the field guidebook of those who had gone before me.

There’s something communal about used bookstores. They speak to their visitors in a way that few other commercial trades could hope to master. It isn’t their usefulness that draws us in so much as it is their invitation to belong to the great minds and poets of our past. The air of mystery and discovery that lingers in their hallways hints of worlds still to be known and wisdom of the ages left to be uncovered. The vastness of an establishment like King’s Books is a monument opposing all knowledge or insight we thought we might have attained on our own. The smell of decaying paper and fragile bindings serve as a reminder that all is not new, and if we refuse to carefully engage the wisdom of our past it might soon disintegrate and disappear. Used bookstores speak of belonging. In them we are faced with all who have gone before us and what they have handed down to us through the ages. They are the embodiment of a great history whose timeline leads up to and ends with our feet standing on its floorboards.

I often find myself wishing the spiritual life could be just as tangible. I view the spiritual life much like I view used bookstores— something I engage with in the here and now and yet I am simply existing on the edge of the great story that has come before me. The vastness is overwhelming. Where do I start? The only way I can begin down this spiritual path is the same way I start every journey into King’s Books— I follow wherever inkling or intuition leads me and I go from there. A second favorite spiritual mentor of mine was found by following such an inkling.

This time I was in a library looking for a book on the wrong side of the aisle when a title gilded in gold caught my eye. It was The Confessions of St. Augustine, published as an exceptionally made copy. Having never heard of St. Augustine, I wondered for a moment whether confessions was simply another word for the man's writings or if the book was indeed full of confessions of sins. Needing to find my intended book for a research paper, I moved on without stopping to look for my answer. But like the Divine alignment that collided my path with that of Merton's, I soon found myself heading back to the library to read the beautiful book which had piqued my interest.

I was almost awe-struck to find that The Confessions of St. Augustine was indeed an entire work of Augustine confessing his sins to God, beginning from birth. How a man could remember and know his inner motivations and thoughts from an age before he even knew of God was confusing, and yet his writing was profoundly convincing. I came to find St. Augustine knew God in a way I had never before witnessed. And it was because he knew and understood God that he was able to know and understand himself so rightly. I had spent decades hearing people talk about God, but this way of knowing Him was something I never knew was possible, and yet an African saint from the fifth century was now showing me the way. I've since spent more than a decade running after Augustine’s model of knowing God. 

As an author myself, I’ve always wondered if authors feel some sense of disappointment when they see their works landing on the shelves of used bookstores. I used to think it a sign of the passing times and old ideas that had run their course. And maybe that is still true in part. But a greater truth is that my contemporaries have stood on the edge of history and added their work to the shelves of the ages, and in doing so they’ve become the next stepping stone for a generation yet to come. They’ve discovered how best to belong to this never-ending story of wisdom that's being told. And I hope one day, built upon those who have come before me, I’ll be able to set my own book upon that shelf, so it too can be picked up by a young soul drawn to the dusty hallways of a used bookstore.

Text: Kelly Anne Meagher
Photography: Joel Faber