I’m not a book keeper
October 04, 2005 // Link
I’m not a book keeper (nor a bookkeeper). I’m more of a read ‘em and leave ‘em sort of guy. I have about a dozen books on a “to be read repeatedly forever” shelf, but everything else gets left behind.
I used to give books to libraries, but they don’t want them any more. I used to sell books to used book shops, but the tuppence I’d get didn’t make it worth lugging them down to the store.
I should join bookcrossing.com. I don’t know why I haven’t. I like the idea, and I’ve left scores of books in “please find me and read me” places all over North America.
[aside]
I’d like to officially coin the term “litterature” for discarded books, if it’s not already in use as a description for the new age section of a book shop. Remember: “littérature” is a French word that means books written in a made-up nonsense language, while “litterature” is now an English term coined by Carrington Vanston because he is witty and interesting and should be invited to parties. Someone get the Webster people on the line...
[end of aside]
Last week I took Max Barry’s book Jennifer Government to Denver, where I left it sitting comfortably on a bench in Park Meadows Mall.
I wonder if it’ll write?
A fly flew into Denver
October 14, 2005 // Link
A fly flew into Denver at the same time I did. I spotted him flitting from headrest to headrest in the plane just after the movie started, as if he was trying to find the best vantage point to watch Herbie: Fully Loaded with compound eyes.
The truth, of course, is that there isn’t one.
That bluebottle made me wonder about something. From his perspective the world might have seemed suddenly boring and sterile. Where were the breezes? Where was the delicious rotting food and the thrill of avoiding spiders? And where oh where had all the pooh gone?
Seen from the dull curve of a headrest, the flight was just a period of unexplainable tedium followed by being suddenly released into the open air and again surrounded by familiar delights and dangers.
From a larger perspective, he was living one of the most interesting and incredible fly lives ever. He’d flown higher and faster than any fly has ever dreamt of. He’d traveled an unimaginably far distance to a strange, mile-high metropolis a good chunk of the way around a planet whose size and place in the universe—and perhaps even existence—no fly had even begun to fathom.
And it all happened, unnoticed, during what he probably saw as the boring bit between the two interesting halves of his life.
The thing that fly made me wonder about was whether he was the only one on the plane that had happened to, because I suspect it’s not just flies that live lives of unnoticed adventure.
Then again, maybe he thought he was lifting the whole damn plane and us monkeys were lucky to have him along.
And maybe we were.