My mother is the librarian for the reading room in her condominium. Which is good, because it gives her something to do (so she's not all up in my business all the time) and because she has a bit of a larcenous streak. In that she's not above "borrowing" something permanently or making something disappear. Nothing big or significant, mind you. For instance, when a bridge near our old house was being refurbished, she quietly took bricks (many of which were antique) from the deconstruction site. A couple each day on her morning walks. Enough to build a little patio in the back yard. The phrase "don't ask, don't tell" was coined for her.
Anyway, she has made a very lovely copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare "disappear" and somehow magically reappear on my front stoop. Nice. I collect such volumes, being the devoted English major that I am. Have quite a few -- some very old, some not so old but detailed. It's cool. And of course, I had to look up my favorite sonnet -- it's the way I break in my new (or new to me) editions. My version of breaking a bottle over the bow.
CXVI
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
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