Rescue

I’m going to buy a book. I’ll probably read it, too, but not before I buy more of them. As greedily as I’ve been savouring its absence, knowing that it’s there to be made my own, it’s becoming too much of a distraction. Wanting it doesn’t add that shimmering hint of music to my voice any more. I hope not to speak much, if I can help it, but I’ll sing my way through a few daily platitudes when I have it at last. Even before I have it, the active intention to bring it home will make its absence sweet again. There’s nothing quite the same as rescuing a part of yourself from the shelves of a book shop. It just can’t be overstated how important it is to make sure you’re rescuing the right part. 

The shop where I store these extensions to the day’s assorted pleasures has almost as many shelves as I wish I had at home. Safe as the old stories that I carry in my head, they’re never shaken with noise or bleached under a lamp hotter than the one beside my bed. It’s a shelter for every smile my older face might wear. I know exactly where to find the book I’m looking for, but also that the path I indulge across the carpet is going to tread the twisting and looping line of someone who’s never seen a printed word before. I’ll be serenaded into a stupor by spines flashing their names and colours at me, because I can’t ignore the entire, breathing and grieving world that each one conceals. Detained in the din of all those screaming miracles, I’ll already be plotting to fill the next book-shaped gap in my memory.

I haven’t thought much about my purpose as I approach the shop along its busy street, whose crowds I would never trouble myself to navigate for a lesser cause. Apart from trying and sometimes failing not to collide with other pedestrians, I’m struggling to name the author of the book I’m currently reading. It’s a collection of poems with a central theme that I can see waving in the distance, but which I couldn’t even attempt to identify. Luckily, it’s identified in the blurb. Unluckily, it’s as abstract to me as the author’s name, so both slip out of my mind the second I’m not looking at them. It doesn’t matter, though, because it’s left a spellbinding trail of images that I could never forget. Like every other book, including the one I’m about to buy, it’s changing me in some irreversible cocktail of minor damages and repairs. 

There’s a new novel in the window, with intricate swirls of black and pink tempting my eye on the cover. I’m not exactly sure what I’m tempted to do, because it’s one that I’ll probably never read, but if I can hold it I might still extract some kind of meaning from the textures on its jacket. A flood of similar temptations delivers the dramatic greeting I was hoping for as soon as I step inside. I start to spin my way past a thousand paths that might take me somewhere brighter than the one I’ve chosen, but eventually land with my feet planted roughly in front of it and my hands bolstering their nerves to seek it out. No limb of mine is ever entirely confident of its place, but I’d never wish such a fate on them. We’re in this wonderful disaster together, spinning until all the tides and their babbling tongues fall still. In enough time for me to parse the title and reflect on the satisfied smile that I’ve already lifted from its neat and softly hued cover, ten copies have found their way into my careful grip. 

Some are easy to eliminate. One has a crease in the corner, another has a slight tear and, to my horror, one of them even has a crack all the way down the spine. One of the others is mine, but it will take careful examination to discover which. Although I would never risk making such a mark, there are small dents and crinkles that can go unnoticed until it’s too late to rule out the possibility that I did. I lift each one to enjoy its familiar features instinctively and with an invaluably quiet mind. It’s like a meditation, except instead of shedding my anxiety, I’m just holding it in an unstable form that I wouldn’t trade for anyone else’s peace. They all seem to hold a kind of whispered stripe that’s residual of the way they were printed, too subtle to be called an error and differently placed on every copy. It’s not enough to reject any of them yet, but as I pass them close to my eyes I discover smudges on some, a speck of dirt on one and a poorly placed price sticker on another. I’m left with two copies that I would be delighted to call my own, but only one of them is actually mine.

I’ve been here before. It’s not just a choice, because even if I’m free to determine which answer is right, there is still a right one. As far back as my sparse and shy memories can take me, I’ve found myself tripping over freedom. I was barely old enough to speak when a box of coloured pencils fought my unsteady hands and won. I can remember our old grey cat purring beside me on the floor, but not what kind of animal or smiling object I was colouring. Whatever it was, it had a feature over whose trivial shade creative licence came crashing into my life. I was so distraught by the demand from each of two pencils not to lift the other that I left my picture unfinished. I sat still and listened to the cat’s rolling reassurances, as if she would speak the answer if I waited for long enough. 

Since then, I’ve started to learn that there can be no answer if I don’t speak my own at every passing second. I’m not sure I’ll ever get bored enough to absorb the lesson fully, though. I could never read another book again if I had to admit to having so many answers. For today, it’s enough to celebrate the ubiquity of imperfection. Both of these books are gifted with it; all I have to do is wait here until I see which one is more aligned with me. I open one of them slightly and listen to the sounds of the first paragraph’s words. Their meaning stands to the side. I can see it, but all of my attention is given to shape and texture. I went through the same process when I bought the jacket that I’m wearing. It carries a protective fine detail of the person that I am, which I couldn’t fit onto my face or into the unpredictable wanderings of my speech, but I wasn’t yet wearing that detail when I tried it on in the shop. I’m not reading this book yet, but I’ll know if the words feel right.

This is the one. I don’t mean the only one, if past experience is anything to go by. Before I walk out, I’ll discover several other organs that I didn’t know my body needed to survive. This is the exact object I came here to cradle adoringly against my ribs, though. I’ll carry it through the rest of this anatomy lesson like it’s starting to stitch its fibres into my skin. I arrange the others neatly back on their shelf, ready to be rescued when their carers find that they’ve lost just a bit too much sleep without them. When I look around to assess the alphabetical maze of diverging worlds that I’ve traversed, all of its corners and colours carry a fresh veneer of the unfamiliar, which makes my thoughts dissipate into a cloud of the lost sounds I can pick from the room’s low-lying chatter. It feels bigger. There’s enough space to process not knowing what comes next. As I wait to recover a direction from anywhere in this warm bubble, where I would happily remain without one, my head sways sleepily under the gentle charm of desires that haven’t yet been given a name. These new eyes may get me blissfully lost on the way out. 

Mercifully, there can be no way out that doesn’t pause to reflect on the narrative thread that binds us, because there’s a queue to pay. I can feel it vibrating like a guitar string. Maybe I’m a loose page and no one else in the queue has invested enough of themselves into collecting books to share that feeling, but it suits my tuneful smile to believe they do. I can think of no outcome more harmful than being told that I didn’t have to pay. If every book under this roof was declared my own, I would still want them, but no amount of money could relieve me of that want. I’d jump from chapter to chapter, never soothing my hunger for long enough to sink into a dream built from their poetry and plots. Today, I’ll emerge into that afternoon bustle singing my surrender; swaddled in the propulsive myth that not enough is something you can still have. 

This new knot of words that I’ve claimed has a place, on some shelf or in one of my disordered piles, where it always belonged. The book’s absence existed in my hands and under rising waves of anxiety, but my shelves know nothing about absence. It’s their purpose to appear perpetually full. Its presence exists in the midst of their fullness, though; inseparable as a scent, fixed as the moon’s faces and phases. My next calming indulgence in certainty, then, will be to discover exactly what place I’ve been holding for it. There are no empty spaces, but things can be moved. They all have a place, and even if I never determine which one is right, there is still a right one. I’ll lift an unread book from the top of a pile and wipe dust from its jacket with my sleeve, then take another from a shelf because the first better fits its spot. They’re arranging themselves slowly into the final picture of me. Water drops drip from the book shop’s awning and freeze into fine lines under my eyes. I come out of it slightly better adapted to make the choices that clamour for my attention from beneath the street’s cryptic noise. I’ll put the book that I bought in exactly the right place, then forget about it like I forget the dreams that guide me into the most untarnished copy of sleep.