yesterday’s books

keep reading until our eyes grow blurry.

for a while now i’ve been taking advantage

of the online used book market

which is piling up the stock from all of those

vulnerable little bookstore---

the smart ones,

seeing the writing on the wall & no doubt,

the commercials for kindles, nooks and the

pandigital novel for androids,

they have committed their store’s holdings to

bigger online reservoirs who are getting rid of

tons of literature

for next to nothing,

as the death of print media & the complete conversion to

ebooks looms on the horizon.

 

today i received one in the postal mail,

the snail mail,

which still holds true at present in serving a legitimate function

which we have yet to make

digital---

while opening the package to pull from it the work i had ordered,

i was submersed in a wave of

old book smell---

it was not the moldy disgusting smell that you might find at a

garage sale

when people are throwing away their junk because the ceiling had

fell through and water had gone

everywhere,

instead,

it was the smell that only a reader who has been taking part in the act

for quite some time

would know---

it is as if the wooden shelf that the book had been sitting on for

all these years

enveloped the book itself &

holding the book to my nose,

flipping the pages slowly

i felt like i was in a library all to myself &

as i have in the past,

like a kid in a candy store,

i felt as if this online rounding up of all the dying little stores

was my own way of turning my abode into that

store which liberated me through offering me so very many

abundant treats---

this smell tickled my intellect & my consciousness,

it wreaked something of sandlewood, dust and quite frankly

aged

paper,

which holds a unique & wonderful scent

all its own.

 

yesterday’s books never seem to disappoint &

that is not to say that i do not look forward to more years being alive

where large quantities of new literature do not make their way to me

via our most cutting edge technology

whatever that might be---

i consider it a pleasure to stroll amidst the paragraphs,

the sentences, the words,

the meanings & the overall

narratives,

wherever they might take me.

Reviews

[delapruch]

@ permafrost. Thanks for taking the time to read my work! I too love to read books & I am glad you find such depth in them! : )