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Life, actually…

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WHAT REMAINS IN RUSTY TINS AND CLAY POTS?

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The book browser stands petite, just inches away from shelves of volumes jam-packed with words as yet unread.

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She shades her eyes from the overhead light, the better to scan titles up close. Each book is carefully considered, based on clarity of print, boldness of design, brightness of jacket cover, heft in the unshading hand…and a dozen other factors both conscious and un-.

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Here she smiles in place, delighted by the overwhelming possibilities before her.

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She touches each spine, awaiting a cue from the author, a beckoning from the arrangement of words, a clue hidden behind a worn spine.

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She removes a book that calls out to her, opening it to the first page first verse first line, “Wake! For the Sun, who scatter’d into flight The Stars before him from the Field of Night, Drives Night along with them from Heav’n, and strikes The Sultan’s Turret with a Shaft of Light.”

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She blinks in wonder, re-reading this arrangement of words until they begin to make sense. Where would this book take me once I take this book? She muses, closing the book and placing it next to her heart, held snugly under an arm.

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She will re-consider this potential purchase after going through a dozen additional selections.

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One more first-chapter first-page first-line, “It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow.”

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What happens next in this story, she wonders, adding it to her growing stack.

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Journeying homeward later, her new foundlings on the passenger seat next to her, she wonders about the magical array of words each book arranges. She wonders about the authors and who they once were—one, an eleventh-century poet, the other a twentieth-century optimal behaviorist, each spouting forth a unique and loving version of life on Earth.

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Then, her thoughts go deeper: What good are words archived on a shelf if no-one reads them? Where will the words wind up? What happens to the archives? What endures?

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If I don’t rescue and appreciate them, will they even matter?

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She pats the front cover of the topmost book, anxious to get comfy in her favorite chair, spending an evening browsing lives once lived, lives that will be resuscitated as she savors them.

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She thinks, is what remains all a matter of chance? Should we continue preserving the words regardless of their singular fates? Are we merely hoping that, if enough words are preserved, some of them will actually survive as incomplete scrolls hidden in clay pots and rusted cookie tins?

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Tonight, for the first time ever in her young life, she will not only read…she will also begin writing down her thoughts and feelings.

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Eventually, her writings may wind up in the hands of a browser or an archaeologist, depending upon fate and circumstance, depending upon the actions of lone booklovers who hope that sometime, somewhere, somewhen, others may find delight in similar rusty discoveries

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© Jim Reed 2022 A.D.

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