The best thing about buying second hand books is that they might contain stories. No, I haven’t completely lost it, I meant additional stories. Messages, notes on the side, bookmarks from previous owners – they’re all stories. Stories that give you a tiny glimpse of the person who wrote it, or the person it was meant for. The last one I saw – in Pico Iyer’s ‘Abandon’, was very interesting. It said
Dearest A****,
Though this seems, and is the last day at C-72, I promise that its the first day and a nev be start to the best days of our life together.
Yours
S*******
30/Aug/03
I thought there was an amazing sense of romance in that little note. A story from almost seven years back. I wonder why A sold the book. Did they break up? Maybe she didn’t like this genre? Maybe they shifted, and there was no way to carry this. It was an empty page, A could’ve torn it off, she didn’t. Maybe she didn’t have time, maybe she didn’t care. Maybe she didn’t remember. Maybe, God forbid, something happened, and S didn’t want any memories? Maybe she returned it to S after they split, and he sold it. Maybe S never gave it to A, and instead sold it because some memory was too painful? Now you see the possibilities? But, to quote from the book itself “We are no greater than the height of our perceptions”.
I’d only started on the book, but it had already given me a thought. “The death of the author is a way of talking about the death of God. The world itself becomes a poem whose author disappeared long ago.” So the poet dies, the poem remains, the artist dies, the art remains, the author dies, the book remains, God dies, his creation remains, to be interpreted and shaped by us, the ones who see and experience it, limited by the ‘height of their perception’. Maybe the creation was never completed? Like the stories that remain in the head, never to be told. Like the pages that fill the waste baskets. Like the blog’s draft folder? 🙂
Meanwhile, on the next page of the book, there is a signature now, dated 10/04/10. He thinks he won’t sell any of his books.. ever. But then, stories have a way of twisting themselves in time. 🙂
until next time, home pages 🙂
So very true… They leave the imagination so wild in the open…
hehe. and novel ideas too 🙂
What do you suppose the crossed out part is?
No, don’t sell it. Pls!
How CAN you sell a Pico I.?
I think it was ‘new beginning’…
I said I didn’t want to sell it, but you never know what can happen…
now I know what I am going to do tonight..
Go home, open the bookshelf, go through all the second-hand books and find the stories within the stories 🙂
..and what did you find? 🙂
I just had to mention this – A few years ago, my wife picked up a book off the pavements in Bombay because her sister owned a copy and it was one of her favorites – she’d received it as a gift more than a decade ago in Hyderabad, and lost it somewhere along the way when the family moved through several cities over the years.
She opened the first page, saw an inscription. A pair of names.
It was the *same* book.
Stranger than fiction? It’s stories like this that haunt the way you think about the universe.
there you go, reminds me of the quote about love, and it coming back 🙂
awww. that was sweet. i never pick up second hand books coz i love to smell the new books. now i am re-thinking….:-)
i like that too, so I buy a mix 🙂