A Book On My Lap…
The book thing is so little like other things that you never know what to expect out of it : I live in this paradigm world dreaming of a room with wooden floors and bottomless carpets with rows of bookshelves that creak with books holding treasures as old and dense as the dust that covers them. To live among books brings oddities of behavior…On one hand it’s just paper, boards and glue that gets old, gets dropped, gets torn, dirty and on occasions burnt. On the other hand its also a face, a voice, an history, an idea, a memory, a struggle, an existence, a folly, a despair, a mine of information – a recollection.
I think of them as persons – dry, abrasive , inky..paginated in impassive appearances. But what draws me close to these people of the inky world are their endless capability of words and actions, hatching obscure plots or living out their passions in slow motions living life with a matchless intensity. I do not consider them as books – they are people I live with, laugh cry and sulk lodged in my physical memory and a part of the fabric of my sensibility.
I know the precise location of all my books despite successive removals and endless reorganizing, I can recall too the books that affected me profoundly . that is why when I reorganize them, in my head I am reorganizing each of their silhouettes, their past and their profiles. I am making internal order undoing knots and tangles.
Something that always intrigues me is how books manage to coexist peacefully with each other side by side. They are people always at harmony with each other while we as humans out of the book cannot coexist lovingly in the best of the relationships. On the analogies of books as persons of histories, I am always astonished the battles of books are never fought or reported. Sworn enemies find themselves, side by side pressed in an embrace and often clinging to each other. They are not crumpled, torn, disillusioned , devasted or trying to change each other …they coexist happily, each content with their presence and non threatened by the other..
A life’s lesson for us …why do we feel threatened ?