Another day, another book. On and on and on.
Look at this one! Turn to page 38. Feel the texture of the pages. Wait this reminds me of another book. One second while I reach for it. And on and on and on. One books leads to another, until there is a pile of books. The hand moves across the spines on the shelves. I can’t find the one I’m looking for, it must be somewhere else. One library leads to another. The books in the living room library are taken in boxes to the library in the office and back again. So it goes.
Books Books Books, all over everything. When will it stop? When will you be at home in your books? Or better yet, in a book – the book. Your father used to have a dream about searching for the book – that singular book that would end all searching for books. You don’t share his dream because you know that the book is always to come. Le Livre à venir by Maurice Blanchot. You read a note – an Amazon gift-note – in a book from your dad that says:
Happy Birthday! Exhibition catalogue not available until December! This might give you a flavour.
The book as placeholder for a book yet to be published. On and on it goes. Until the moment you look around you and realize that out of all of these books, all of this sifting, sorting, arranging and rearranging. Moving one from here to there, to over here. You have made a nest of books.
This is how we are alike, you and me. I was once a library, my bones were books, my eyes were books, my toes were books, my heart was a book (a very special book – you may remember the one – you won it as a prize at school). But now I am a ghost who haunts another library. This is my home now and it is also your nest. I see that now and I pass you book after book to form a new nest out of an old nest. We are partners in our nest-building from the books where we both live.
One day take this one. Tomorrow, this one. Take three today and four tomorrow. And on and on. Until it stops. Until I stop passing you books. Then where will we be? On which book will your nest rest? All I know it will not be the book your father dreamed or nor the book that was my heart. It will be, yes you guessed it, the book to come – the nest book.
Open it and read.
