at one of the online communities in which i am intermittently present, someone asked what our metaphors for life were… this, my reply, set here as memory and reminder.
Life is a book, it’s pages empty, it’s covers unblemished and gilded.
We begin by reading the words scribed by those who tend us.
We continue by scribbling in the margins and underscoring phrases that resonate, reasonate, percolate.
We eventually clench the quill in tight fingers, and push away all other hands, thinking to make it ‘ours’… writing in heavy, blocky letters… swirls and curls and cursives coming intermittently, as rain falls, or shadows, or mountains.
We sneak looks at the pages of others, copying shamelessly when it seems something that should belong on our pages.
Sometimes, we share pages. Sometimes we shred them. Sometimes we simply stare at the blankness and wish someone else would do it for us.
The card in the back occasionally niggles… a reminder there will be a day when the book must be returned to the library. Wistful thoughts of keeping it, refusing to submit to the truth of the loan.
The blessing of the book rests in many things… that no matter how much is written, we never run out of pages until we’re done…. that no matter how many times we forget and leave it at the coffeeshop, the laundromat, a friend’s house, on the bus, it always finds its way back to us…. that regardless how many errors or edits or redacts we commit to the pristine weave of its leaves, it never quite becomes ruined…. that, at any moment, regardless how much is written, we can decide to take the story in an entirely new direction… the page is accepting, the quill never runs dry, and the red ink of our editing is never indelible.
And, like any book, it exists only to deliver insight, learning, and the chance to have either… both… all.