Opening the book.

Anyway, let’s turn a few pages more and let us move on. Where are we now? Ok, that’s it. So now we’re going through a period in which I’m being read by individuals worthy of being remembered. I guess I got lucky that way. And I don’t know if this has to do with my having a cracked spine, bent page corners, or being rough around the edges. Nor if it has anything to do with my front cover saying “DON’T TOUCH THIS!” The important thing however is that there is something which attracts them enough to pick me out, off the shelf. Who knows what genre I’ve been put under once I got published in ‘88. Classics? Likely not. Books that should have never been published? Hope not. Comics? Mm, not necessarily, unless I was about kid-heroes. Self-help books? So help us God. Sweet quirky shizzle? Hmm, that’ll do. There have been no huge profits from the sales so to speak, sales which took place in charity shops and not around HMV Best Sellers, along Twilight and what have you. And frankly, I’m more than fine with that. Up till now I’ve had quite an interesting readership, good folks who read well, and in some vain ways I feel rather happy for choosing them more or less intuitively. How nice to be able to pick your readers. To this day I look into their eyes and watch the corners of their mouths stretching in their heights; usually they seem bemused, if not fascinated by what they read. What else can I say – I must be a real page turner.

Now I’ve landed in the hands of a person who tries to read me between the lines. For what is true, he is very cautious when he turns the pages if he is interested in finding something new. Pricking up his eyes he warily studies the typeface of every single letter, he looks for words written in invisible ink (but let’s be serious, I’m too old-school to be written in that), sometimes he even feels and strokes the page in an inspective manner until he finds out what new or old ingredients it is made of, how thick it is, whether the binding is tight, etc. I guess that all of this physical examination adds to the reader’s whole experience, but with his nose so close to the page, I am far too easily misread. A paragraph of some importance will then have no meaning to him in the face of this hunt for nonexistent ‘important’ details.

Whenever he is unhappy with what he reads, like happenings that are written before they actually happen, or incoherent emotions, or even when he does not understand the style of writing, which is rather ‘different’ (and nonsensical at times, I suppose), this mature reader begins to ruffle through the pages just like a despotic child. Sometimes he is too tired to stress himself even longer, and he chucks me away on a shelf next to Top Gear, where I’m forgotten for days. Sometimes when he reads me and I look into his eyes, sad or frustrated by what they read, I can see a strange desire to rip out a few muddled pages. But like the pathological collector that he is, instead of throwing the ripped pages away, he would put them away in a drawer containing worthless objects needed for ‘just in case’ situations, only to end up forgetting about them too.

Instead, I’d like to think that he would make paper planes out of those lonely pages, and write love messages on them. He would then let go of them from his window on the fifth floor, and they would never hit the ground, ever. And if, while reading me, it happened to rain, what if he would then put me under the pillow which he lays his head on every night? He would read me dreaming, and would dream beautiful dreams.