Used books
are a little-known joy.
It’s amazing
how quickly thoughts change and flitter away. Just two minutes ago my mind was
bubbling over with delicious phrases on the glory of old books, but in the time
it took to grab my journal and a pen and craft that lifeless sentence, all my
inspiration faded into oblivion--exact phrases and combinations of words that
may never again enter my brain. Thoughts shattered, lost, and never to be
thought again by my small mind in my short time in this immense universe. Words
never to be born from this pen.
An exaggeration
in tone, perhaps, but not altogether untrue. The mind does like to boil with
ideas while the brain’s back is turned. It’s almost as though I’m strolling
down a road in a yellow wood when I suddenly realize that I’ve stumbled into
Wonderland. Autumn trees are unexpectedly laden with green foliage. Flowers
have burst from their cocoons and blossomed faces. A grinning cat smiles slyly
down from his perch on a tree. And the Queen of Hearts is enjoying a game of
flamingo-croquet in a field over yonder. In awe of the sight I am beholding and
doubting if I should ever come back, it suddenly occurs to me that I had the sense
to stuff a camera in my pocket before setting out this fine morning--what a
most unusual photo this would make! It would certainly win first place at the
Polk County Fair. Yet after I spend thirty
consuming seconds fishing my camera out of my impossible pocket, I look up through
the camera lens only to realize that the green and the faces and the cat and
the queen have all vanished back into the guise of an ordinary wood. The
extraordinary that stood before me just moments before was just as real as the
ordinary that stands before me now, but the wonder of the moment can never be
fully shared or even documented. It has faded into a memory, and because of its
fleeting obscurity it will soon fade further into the memory of a memory--the
vague idea of something: a thought, a smell, a color--that once existed.
And thus it
is that with my thoughts--a sad, forgotten possibility of what might have been
fading into a passing playful melancholy.
