The entry way to the Limehouse Library Hotel where I will be making my home base for the allocated three months is a vestibule. Immediately the curiosities start oozing out. I let the first door close behind me and the little girl who’s name I did not exchange wanders back to her bench fully disengaged from me now. I am careful subconsciously to not let the wonderment I start taking in spill out to clutter the garden and jam up the already questionable driving patterns of Londoniers off Commercial Road. Like a rumbling avalanche the whole cereal of items could flood out and rise and lift the girl now reading again up two stories.

The first extraordinary piece is a classic type writer. Black gun metal and skeletonized to see each lettered button depressible. The mechanics of thought to page are evident and I go to touch a bit of that history only to hesitate I might begin oxidizing it. I bet if the type writer could speak it would talk in rapid chatterings and dings as the cartridge is needing a return to start the next lines.

The second door to the vestibule is left open and I decide I’ll leave the type writer to be a thing I learn more of each time I pass in and out casually. I drag my suitcase into the main room and there is a charming stairwell to the right but a more industrial flight up a wide and white wall hall ahead flanked with portraits. The entire wall to the floor on the left before the main room is covered in portraits of some I recognize with great esteem others I am curious about. The new comers  seem to be linked by dark hair, serious faces yet soft, giving welcomes. They look a family. Some of their genetics go up the stairwell. Those portraits take a bottom position happily enough to be honored.  It seems already crowded but in a way a lively party and all the guest are turning to the door to see the next arrival. Me. I feel underdressed and hopeful they will still all talk to me. If the lighting wasn’t so natural from the sunroof in the main area, the entry would take on a more bottleneck with all the portraits greeting you. There is a chair in the corner as if anyone might join this grouping or sit for a portrait if deemed worthy. I have had this feeling before and it akins to walking the aisles of books in a library being aware of the books on the shelves full of chatter and opinions. I want to touch the portraits like I would all the spines of books walking by them but again my oils are not invited that way. I want to add my book, my portrait but that is an arrogant aspiration. It makes me so big and so small simultaneously to think of being leather bound and filled in with acrylic paint.

Along the floor and creeping up the side tables in the main sitting area are small and various porcelain and metal curios. Each well cared for and each seeming very charming. There are not chips. I half expect the whole décor to be capable of purchase. Perhaps the entire arrangement is a gift shop?  If each item could speak even in whispers the room would come alive with tales of where they were procured and who carted them to and from until they laid in a box and made their way here to sit amongst other such care for memorabilia. I know that emotion where no one can part even as we part and shrink with certain memories and the items that house them.

I hurry through worried though I have plenty of room to maneuver I will somehow break something. I am clumsy. I try to announce it loudly so others secure themselves and I don’t let them down. I find myself mumbling, “Oh I’m so clumsy,” to no one just to establish my accountability amongst the guest already on the walls and throughout. No one registers my excusal and so I hurry through to face the reception. The items about maintain a reverence that hushes the room and maintains the library in all its’ demanded peace. What useful décor to secure a quiet and careful zone like the library once was by common agreeance!

The receptionist bar is a green marble with a dark table top. It is snugged nearly against the right hand stairwell with the wooden banister and carpeted steps. The bar is empty at the moment and I approach to ring the bell. The ding shatters the quiet and though the sitting area to the left is empty, all the items about seem to turn to see me and the noise I made. Does wallpaper have a neck to turn on? It feels so. I look away with a funny apology.

A young women appears out of a small room to the right. I catch a shorter man in a light colored sport coat appearing mid stairwell descending. His hand is on the banister gently and I catch a little glint off the silver ring on his finger. The shine seems to emphasize the softer palette in the room of reds, browns, creams. New world meets old I suppose but just a hint. I don’t think the library or the patron curios would allow much shine to yell about.