My Life On The Bookshelf
I have collected a lot of books. All kinds. New books, old books. Bought, found, traded, inherited. You know you’re a bibliomaniac when you won’t throw away an obsolete computer manual or electronics catalog, because it will help you reconstruct what the past might have been like - It gives you a glimpse of the state of the art.
Consider briefly: Knowledge is stored in books. But past worlds aren’t. I just wish they were. You’re the reader, you make the world in your head anew…
Staring at bookshelves too long gave me an idea: My memory is the analogue of a library. There are only so many books that can be piled face open on the reading tables. Everything else is on the shelf. But, you better believe it’s there, even if you forget. No matter the card catalog or computer database, that book could be missing from its spot. If there even is a spot. So it is with my head: I got a lot of things tucked away back there. When I browse the shelves, I am often stunned by what I find.
Fragment 1
She wanted to become a librarian. I wanted to become Borges. Mine might have been harder to achieve. That librarian left me. I met a couple others, but they didn’t stick. I started hanging around barmaids instead. At least one of my books has a beer stain to show for it. I need someone to dust off the shelves of my mind, to see how I live on the shelf, waiting for the right library patron to stumble across my volume.
Fragment 2
Nobody is the subject of this sentence. I admired the guy for his blankness. I wasn’t ever sure what to visualize. And, a song on the player reminded me of him again, one day. “I’ve been fooling everybody - I’ve been uptown at the zoo.”.
Posted by Evan Bittner Sun, 26 Aug 2007 23:01:00 GMT
