Nostalgia- Text only

04Jun07

When was the last time you saw a book plate?

“Ex- Libris” it reads; it means from the library of _____ and you are supposed to write your name in. If you have fancy bookplates, your name will be imprinted already beneath the “Ex- Libris.” I always see them and think about cemeteries and “ex” being a marker of passing, like an ex- book. Wandering in a library of dead books, I wonder if people see bookplates as gravestones that mark the death of the book and possibly (in that postmodernist way) the death of the reader.

Do people have libraries anymore?

I have an infestation of silverfish in my collection. I am constantly finding the metallic word eaters and smashing them into miniature nickels. I feel slightly let down when ink doesn’t come out of them, like somehow all the text they have eaten will be broken from their tiny forms and released for my sorting.

I think that is why I am attracted to squid; they make ink. I wish that I could make ink out of my body. Instead of making milk one day when I have a child, I wish I could make ink and could have my child suckle on the seething blackness. I feel as if I might have more nutrition to offer someone through my ink—that my child would grow up smart and well-read because she was breast fed ink as a baby. My ink would be tasty and full of linguistics. It would have a high percentage of semiotics and deconstruct easily in the system. I will sink into the hot tub massaging my breasts and make beautiful swirls dissipate into the water. I will be an artist; my ink paintings will be seen as a revolution in body art and feminist theory.

But, instead I will make milk and dream of being part squid.

I am standing in front of a behemoth that in punctuated by small brass nipples on rectangular drawers—a wooden elephant scared with secrets. Each drawer is labeled in small black typed letters and numbers, reminding me of a time when typewriter noises were common. I pull out the top left drawer because I am searching for something in particular today. I like to pick drawers at random and flip through the cards until I come across something that simply strikes my interest. Today, since the warm breezes of summer have swayed me, I feel like returning to an old friend. I read this book when I was a child, entranced by the watercolor paintings and mythical beasts within its story. The drawer extends past my arm and threatens gravity by staying perfectly rigid. The heavy smell of forgotten paper clutches to each index card. The years of fingering and flipping have made all edges soft like an worn cotton shirt, no trace of any angles are left. I casually run my hand across the tops of all the cards to find the designated call number for my book. Whispering, I speak aloud the number for my reaching my old companion and orient myself like a compass point toward the children’s literature section of the library.

Do you ever think about where books come from?

Like babies, books are born from bodies. Unbound bodies are skinless bodies. Vellum is made from sheep’s skin. The cover of the creature’s body becomes the cover of the pages of the book. The site of the book’s creation is also the site of the body’s sacrifice. Books are born from bodies.

I find myself feeling the shelves of spines, my hands reached out as I wander towards my book. Each spine is slightly different, but it is like being in a room full of strangers all with their backs to you. The insensitivity to the relationship between books and people makes a chalky taste arise in the back of my throat.

I must quickly find my book and escape this indifferent book brothel.

I wander what conversations occur between books when no one is watching. Do they converse spine to spine or do they embrace covers open, page to page?

Do books die of old age? Do they cower forward with the weight of textuality bearing hard on their spines?

Knowing my book is within reach, I press my body into the shelf, trying to feel as many spines against me as possible. I am opening my flesh to these books, these strangers, as if to honor the sacrifice of flesh from others. The feeling is perverse, like a loose woman who experiences life purely based on not wanting to miss out on any possible sensory input. Slowly pulling back and easing into the actual act of taking my book off the shelf, a large volume with gilded pages catches my shirt where the buttons meet holes. I gently tug my shirt back, and in a mix of curiosity and reproach, I examine my stalker. I inventory the old book: thick burgundy leather cover, faded gold embossed lettering, more gold edging each page, marbled front and back pages in navy blue and ivory, and an inscription that reads “ To my love, hold this close and think of me” written in large cursive on the title page. The beauty of someone else’s love strikes me so swiftly I know I must take this book away from this place. I don’t really care what the book is about; it joins the growing stack in my left arm as I head towards the check-out desk.

Feeling like I have picked up a maudlin hitchhiker, I approach a seated woman of unassumingly average looks. She has the kind of face that a person will forget within seconds of leaving her presence. I’d feel bad for her, but I already hate her. She, and the others like her, disgust me—irreverently tossing and stamping, gluing, and folding, their filthy hands pimping out precious pages. These poor strays deserve better homes, homes where they are dusted, cleaned, read, caressed, and curled up with; a home like mine. I would love them all if I had time. These people don’t understand—these pushers, these pimps. Breaking free of my internal soliloquy, I give the woman my card and my two books.

“The Myth of the Unicorn,” she reads aloud the metallic leather letters and runs her index finger across the front cover. She flips to the back page and pulls out the due date card. Stamping without gusto, she moves down the stack to my book that I came for.

“The Terrible Nung Gwama,” she stumbles across the painted text.

“What’s it about?” she inquires still not looking me in the eye.

“A monster and a woman who beats him,” I coldly spit out.

She makes some kind of “mmhm” noise and stamps the return date on the card that only had two other dates on it. She hands me the books and looks me in the eye.

“Sounds fun,” she says in a tone that I would think was sarcastic if she was not so obviously void of affectation.

I find that people who read books for what they are about miss the reason books exist in the first place. If it was all about what was said, people would never care what font it was in or what color the cover was.

Sitting in my car, I put the books in the passenger seat. I entertain a fleeting thought of buckling them in, but decide to move them to my lap instead, wedged between my breast and the steering wheel. As a child, I remember joking my parents that I didn’t need to study for a test, that I would simply sleep with the book under my head and absorb all the knowledge, like osmosis. Driving home, I imagine the words shaking themselves free from structured sentences and migrating to the margins. They collect and collide like drops of water, creating new combinations—puddling together and pooling into poetry. The poems glide out of the pages and move to the boundary of my being. Black inky sestets and short shiny couplets penetrate my pores. I am injected with a dose of language; I become written.

Once home, I shelter the books inside and create my reading environment. I like to read under this certain light- a sixty-watt true-light bulb in a frosted shade- that hangs over my thrift-store recliner in the corner of my living room. I turn on the light and grab some throw pillows off the couch to blockade myself into the curled position of a fetus in a womb of fluff.

I settle into the decrepit corduroy cushions of the recliner and reach for the book on unicorns. As my hand closes over the edge, between the two covers, an instant message noise from my computer in the back room disrupts my movement. My grip slips and the pages flare open and slice down across my pale fingers.

Three red lines erupt from my hand. I stand up slowly.

Papercuts–the books way of thanking me for bringing it home. A drop of my blood drips onto the flayed book on the floor, striking out this sentence on page 342.

“When he saw the maiden, the Unicorn would run up and lay its head in her lap, at which point it could be easily taken by the hunters hiding nearby.”

I sit back down and ponder over who has been marked more by this incident, the book or me. I decide the staining of my blood is past any effort to clean it off. I squeeze my hand over the crease of the book. Little red drops pause and shoot to the edges of the page. I decide to let my blood seep into the ivory page. I pick up the misfit book and close the covers quickly. I press the book together between my palms. An abstract image of blood and text greets me with mirrored symmetry when I reopen page 342 and page 343.

I wonder if the book feels my ink inscribe its pages.

I wipe my hand off and turn my attention to the din of noises calling me to my computer.

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