Mind Sprocket: The Back Page : When Literature Hugs Back

I keep scanning my bookshelf for a choice book. I’m not sure for what I’m looking, but I do know that I can’t just read anything at this particular moment. I want to read, but not just anything. A book can’t just happen to me. I want to meet a character at her doorstep and have tea with her.

I want her to talk to me and open my heart to new ideas or even just empathize with me. I want to know people whom I have contact with daily the way I know characters after I finish the last page in a novel. I don’t even know what a character would look like, but that feels unnecessary when I can see her motivations, her worries, and the little things that grant her purpose. The fact that she wears curlers to bed every night is a little fact I forget once I finish the book.

Physical things get in the way of how we know each other. We divide each other into categories based on appearance, write each other off when we don’t even really have a clear picture of someone’s character at all. We use people’s appearances as an excuse to avoid what people have to say. We can’t hear hearts beating because we let our vision blind us.

When I finish a novel, I realize my life is nothing like the character I came to love. If she and I were in person over tea, we’d probably grieve together over her recent loss.

Literature transcends the boundaries we create.

Literature connects the dark recesses of our humanity that we refuse to acknowledge.

Maybe I will let a book happen to me; after all, we never know who’ll we meet. Maybe she’ll come to my doorstep and have tea with me this time.