Bent Corners and Caged Wonders

When you open a book there is more than just a telling, more than just some adventure, there is a story. A story beyond typed words. Beyond each carefully chosen letter, crafted phrase. There's a story in the parchment, in the gritty texture of the page, in the stains, of mosquitos or spiders killed in a frantic shutting of the book, in the slime of some borrowed supper smudge, in the deliberate marring of the page by the pen, the turned corner of the page. 

I've always the devoured the page, the fiction trapped between cover to cover, but I have also stopped to consider the story encapsulated without the book, surrounding it. When I was younger I would frequently bend the top corner of the page to mark my progress, watch in wonder and fulfillment as that little tic mark moved down the spine of the book, some symbol of the experience. I owned a copy of Tolkien that I lovingly dragged around everywhere, and the sloppy cover of this softback book has been bent beyond reckoning, soiled by rain, and trod upon, and kicked around more than one bus. It was there, on that bus, that I was ridiculed for not taking care of the book. That I had diminished its value.

That was when I stopped dog-earing. When I made sure to keep the page pristine, unmarred my experience. There was no longer a story, simply an act. An act of repetition, of guarded emotion, of careful closed thoughts. There was a story and a prison. No longer a story and an adventure. No longer a companion, a confidante. Just another to take care of. Years later I awoke to a revelation.

Books are for experiencing. Books want to be read. Want to be lived in. Crave a reader who will take them through hell and high water, who is not afraid to lovingly curl the corners of the page, to signify a rite of passage. Books that long for an adventure beyond the ideas contained within. Books that don't mind a splatter of this or that. Books want you to keep coming back for more. Rather than a good dusting. 

Books shouldn't expire in some bookshelf, looking classical and morose. They need to breathe. Be kicked around the floor of a bus, shoved into a bag, held closely. Inanimate objects aside, there needs to be more story than the one dictated. Let's be meta, folks. 

Gnawing Memory

Here's the worry: I think everyone has a tendency to idealize situations. People. Places. And the thing is, the longer the time gap, the larger the perceived distance, the more enigmatic, the more full of hope a person gets in regards to idealizations. Our edges begin to soften, we glow with a light that may not have been there. We project our visions, change mere mortals into demigods through memory, through our perceived notions. Or rather lack thereof. And then it occurs. The moment. The meeting. And it falls to pieces. Becomes far less than our imagined castles as our contrivances crumble.

Who do I remember wrong? What, where?

That's the canker that gnaws.

Just Decide

If you want to feel defeated. Overwhelmed. Exasperated. Just decide to graduate high school early in an attempt to get out of the state you don't want to live in. Just decide to attend a private christian university for about as long as your brain can possibly handle without your heart committing mutiny (one and half years). Just decide to move North on a whim for cheap schooling and change your degree (one year). Just decide to change your degree emphasis and spend half a year making right angles. Just decide to take a semester off of school because all you've been bloody doing is school for your whole entire life, just decide to have the right amount of income to not receive the financial aid that you direly need. Just decide to work very hard in high school so that you become second in your class and receive no scholarships. Just decide to find another university after you've already been through two in order to complete a degree that you're not even sure you want. Just decide that what you really want is to go to another country, Scotland, overseas but be completely unaware and unable to decipher how to go about that plan. Decide to sit on the couch one day and browse for hours looking for schools, knowing it's just one more session of entrance and exit counseling for more loans. Just decide that a degree in Scotland would basically mean starting over and therefore a waste of around 30,000 dollars in loans. Just decide.

The Head or the Heart

Here's the thing--everyone runs about madly, dashing about, trying to find the right words, the right phrases, the right meaning behind the heart. And I think it's a bit more difficult than extracting an idea, a thought from the heart. That's the thing about this muscle--that keeps the body moving and the soul thriving--it's so hard to define. In a cardiovascular sense, yes, it's a muscle that pumps and pumps and pumps until one day that muscle makes its final contraction, ending someone. But it's also more obscure than that--it's an idea, a thought--things that can't be written on paper or explained without some kind of confusion. That can't be translated. And I think that scares us. Terrifies me. What is the purpose, the motivation? Why does the heart burn and the head question? It's this terrible truth and confliction of the head and the heart that leads so many to misunderstand his fellow man--to use their head where they should use their heart to understand or vice versa. Perhaps what I'm trying to say is that the heart is the most difficult part of having a soul. Of being a soul. Confined to the mere space of eighty years. And it's this urgency--this knowledge that each pump leads to the last--that terrifies me. Mortality is what it is. But what if you had such an acute understanding of mortality--that the next contraction could be your last--that suddenly all of the rigamarole and hoop jumping felt like pish posh. Like unequivocal waste. Time is limited. Time is false. And if we only have so much time, so less time, how can we ignore the burn of the heart? I think if we would listen we would hear the whisper of our heads--logic--logic that says let go of inhibition. The head is closer to the heart than we could ever imagine. And to ignore the burn of the heart would be to question the power of the head. All that to say, burns can't be ignored. Can't be left off until something is accomplished. After all--to ignore the burn only worsens the pain. The pain the head will have twenty years from now, as it slowly comes to the knowledge that the heart has been roasting and left to wallow, to forget where the source of the heat came from.

Twenty years from now what burn will have scarred your heart because you misinterpreted the head?