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.