Eating books, May 2012

Remember those books about Brazilian literature I found in the trash and brought home? What a pity: because of the intense action of fungi, some of them are breaking like puff pastry. So to keep them intact, this week I decided to pack all of them in parchment paper. It is my last attempt to keep them at least composed, since some of them are already missing the cover and others lack the first or last page. It is interesting to see how time treats authorship, dedications, and sometimes even part of the narrative. Many of them now are just stories without beginning or end, apocryphal, without title or recommendation. With the demise of a piece of the book, time rewrites history. I wonder what the authors think about that unauthorized co-authored, imposed by the nature of things. In retrospect, the weather is co-author of our story, whether we want it or not. In the midst of many ongoing processes and the inevitability of decay, the time gnaws our desire to be eternal.

            I like the books made of paper, because they give me the olfactory and tactile sensation of the reading. But I must admit that the vision of oxidized crumbs scattered all over my living room's floor bothers me. Those fungi untie plots, resolve conflicts, abruptly terminate a discussion, and disappear with characters without the slightest regard for the author or readers. Greedy and indifferent, it is as if those fungi were saying: "- You author writes, they the readers read, we the fungi eat." It is a fatal fact. It is a final fact, yet in face of such ignominious end, my human nature compels me to react. From the bottom of the drawer I take a ball of twine soft cotton with which I bind the volumes of words wrapped in waxed paper. Then I finish it with a loose tie knot. Actually, there is no need for me to read these books again, I think, because I know their content already. But there is no need to confined them to a box either, as if they had committed a crime. The transparent alabaster color of the wrap will protect them, and the loose ribbon is more like an embellishment easy to unbind.

            I like looking at those books. They are pieces of me that are just there. A book ending up in a landfill? No sir! Between two hands or resting on a shelf, those are the perfect places for a book. A book is only another form assumed by a tree, and its handling should be as gentle as the touch of a bird.