A Eulogy to Swindon

Founded in 1918, Swindon was Hong Kong's oldest bookstore. It was where I got my textbooks as a kid, carried home the collected poems of Sylvia Plath as a youth, and discovered authors, from Federico Garcia Lorca to Siri Hustvedt to Stephen Dunn, as an adult.

Swindon was where I realised that reading, to me, is as much an escape from reality as a confrontation of it. And the running away from and toward reality, happens within the space of one quality read. That's what a good book does - it takes its dear reader to another planet and back to earth where it strikes her that even though the world is far from perfect, there's no place else she'd rather be in.

Take for example The Ear, a children's book by Piret Raud. It is unfeasible that an ear can create a life of its own, let alone make friends with an elephant, yet the possibilities of listening/being all ears in a world of talkers, of dreaming when popular opinion says it will only lead nowhere, are real.

Thanks my cousin Esther for notifying me that Swindon would soon close its doors - you are a sweetie and to this day I still learn from your example how to be kind. Otherwise I would have missed out on saying a proper goodbye to the bookstore, whose swan song came too early despite having lived to see the beginning of another century, before Tsim Sha Tsui's social fabric lost yet some more of its lustre from the grande dame's lamentable departure.

Godspeed, your majesty.

Photo courtesy of Swindon