There are other things, too, that tell a story besides the content contained between the covers. Sometimes, a hastily inked scribble adorns the first page, binding the book to a former owner. Perhaps the pages are stamped with the name of an unfamiliar library from a faraway town, or a forgotten, discarded bookmark has taken up residence.
Why did someone highlight this passage? What meaning did it hold for them?
Even a blotch of spilled soup upon a page tells of an event.
Better are the written letters, jotted down when the book was once given as a present, which simultaneously tells the sad story of a gift departed and a brief, personal history lesson. Am I intruding upon an intimate moment by reading words meant for someone else?
Old books hold such wonder for me. I do like my modern e books for their wondrous technological gadgetry, and once I would have considered them the superior medium for literary consumption, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve fallen back in love with the actual printed word, for many of the reasons listed above.
Books are time capsules, both from a past writer to an unknown reader in an unknown future, but also the physical book itself can hold tantalizing clues as to its worldly travels.
I wonder if the original recipient actually read to the end?
Such are we, too, like books. We contain stories within us, yet we are also adorned with the remnants of our travels. Like any good tale, our lives will keep a reader utterly captivated, eagerly wondering how the story will unfold.
As I go throughout the story of my own life, I often imagine the current events being narrated in print form. Even when I’m agonizing at the lowest parts, I realize a reader would, at that very moment, be leaning ever closer to the page. The reader knows (even as I doubt) that the story will turn out happy in the end, if only both of us has the patience to read on, to keep turning the pages, to see how the tale plays out.
So now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a page to turn...and to write.
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