I was looking for a book. I knew it was on one of the bookcases skattered throughout the house. An older style bookcover, in deep red with a difficult to read title, was upside down so I pulled it toward me with the intention to right it to its proper placement. It slipped, tipping open as it reached the floor, and out slid a business card, my grandfather’s. The published date on the copy of The Essays of Francis Bacon was 1908- so I suspect this was a college book for him.
Now that my attention was diverted from my search, I took a moment to inspect the volume. I only grabbed a handful of books from his library when his children were clearing out his things once they had sold their parents’ home. My grandfather marked pages with little scraps of paper, ripped from pages of a used pad. Opening to one, it read.
The edge of the page was frayed as if had been held tight between the thumb and crooked index finger of the right hand. It’s as if the words had sprung into the readers thoughts and grabbed hold. That delightful igniting of the brain caused him to clutch the paper.
That’s why we read, isn’t it? Those private moments when the words bewitch us with their beauty or their truth. When we sit in our big comfy arm chairs and wonder how someone could say it so concisely, how someone could have read our thoughts which were not yet properly formed and put the fragments into words on paper. It doesn’t happen often. But when it does we stare at the page, clutch it, and enjoy the moment.
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