Making a space at home

I've stayed home today--typically I head to school on the days I do not teach as (for the time being) I have my studio on campus. But today, I'm at home, drinking lots of tea, making piles and piles of applesauce, and taking time to turn a small, rectangular, wood paneled room into a more efficient, agreeable, aesthetically pleasing office/small drawing, collage, painting studio space. My little room here at home may be minute, BUT it is rimmed on one side by a row of eight windows--really, there are eight! Indeed curtains would provide me with a bit more warmth as our frigid North Carolina winter approaches, but I cannot bear to block any of my lovely white, clear, country light. I suppose my space would only be a better room if it somehow possessed in addition a row of built-in wooden bookshelves--full of my favorite books--is there a more precise symbol of sorting out/wondering than a repository of one's very, very favorites? Just as the "studio" is a physical manifestation of an individual's idiosyncratic internal inclinations, is not an individual's book shelf also a particularly telling compendium/index? (Someday I will have a studio with built in bookshelves.)

Oh, but this move to the country has afforded us a brilliant luxury--for the first time in our married life a wall of built-ins (not so very far away from my wood-paneled room actually). Space for a wall of books--a very good reason to buy a home we thought, and truly one of the most pleasing of images. I cannot imagine my life (and too, my making) without books.