Closed Tear

You are in the library.

No. Sink deeper. Before you were sprayed with the nasty corrosive gunk of ego and culture. Before you were covered in linguistic contaminants. Before you were sterilized and cauterized, and the wounds of your mind were still open and fresh.

You are on a distant island of this fantastic but mundane empire. The sun is fading through the windows, smeared into burning droplets. You came for shelter from the rain, and the mosquitoes. They lay their eggs in standing water, so all week they have been breeding and you don’t want to get bit or have to drink bitter quinine to stave off super-malaria.

Your fingers drift across the glossy shelves of laminated books, attracted by a beguiling title or spinal hue. You can take a peek inside if you wish, although these are but a few of the vast assortment of books that have washed up to this library.

You are in the YA section. You pick a book from the shelf. Close your eyes. Is it new? Freshly acquired by the library? Or has it now attained the used quality of a library book; not trashed, but the pages have been chemically altered by the many hands flipping through the same book, sharing the same dream or nightmare. In the front card pocket you see their names. You are lonely, so this brings a wistful pang to your heart. So close to these people, boys and girls and who knows who, from all these different lives inaccessible to you. You wish you could meet them. People are always meeting in a book, as if by magic. But in waking life, this art eludes you. It is woken people who are most asleep, most resistant to the dreamlike permeation between worlds. So quick to categorize themselves and each other, and decide ahead of time how their day, their entire life will go. They laugh, but only to dismiss a foolish idea. We couldn’t possibly…it’s too early…too late…it’s never time for an adventure.

Or is the book mauled, nearly at the terminus of the library’s disposal criteria? The pages barely hang together, giving this adventure a fragile quality. Maybe a page has gone entirely missing and you have to infer what happened. What are the characters breathlessly responding to? Did you miss a page of filler with silly quips, or dry descriptions of landscape that you would deem an acceptable casualty? Or was it plot essential, a crucial reveal or character moment? Is this missing page the moment you wake from the dream, just on the edge of finally understanding—

What is the cover like? Is it from the Crested Era? The Armadine Enlightenment? Woodcuts or classical illustrations, charmingly dated and innocent? Or something darker from twenty years ago, acknowledging a certain melancholy of youth? Or even something from the last few years, zeitgeist aesthetics, shiny and cool?

You take the book to the front desk and the librarian, she writes your name: CANCER PRIZE, and the due date: You never miss the date but at this age, it is foreboding. A rare preview of adult consequences. Property, time, theft—

So you humbly accept this responsibility. In the Sevenever forever. And the rain is still falling and through the thick glass walls the mosquitoes swarm, so you read—where?

In the reading tables at the center, so you are next to the others (Boys and girls you can be close to even if you don’t know how to talk to them—and adults with their own slightly imposing vibration. Surely reading something important in those glasses, reference materials?)?

Hiding between remote shelves? Taking your colorful YA book to a dry, dull region like HISTORY or MICROFICHE where you are less likely to see other people?

At the very back, by the thick glass where the mosquitoes silently buzz and the rain streaks down? Close to the world but insulated?

In the kid’s section where they keep the puppets and toys and have chairs for reading time? You know you’re too old for it but you hope no one yells at you. And you’re kind of small for your age so maybe no one will notice. There’s a bean bag you can sink into and curl up with your book. Take your time.

You read the names at the front of the book, the way you walk past houses and wonder at the lives inside. But those glowing windows never give you anything so intimate as these names. Hints at their parents, cultures, religions, other parts of the world or familiar ones just as inaccessible to you. Words of power softened and distorted by time. Names like processed food, no longer resembling the original ingredients. Masks to ward away the hunters of faces. And now your name is among them, and you wonder if they will think of you.

There is a legend of a book where the names on its card become trapped inside, all brought together from their disparate backgrounds to save the world from evil. And that is why checkout cards exist. You pray for this to come true.

You press your face in, inhaling the pages. The decaying lignin smells like caramelized paper. Ever since the bad thing happened, your other senses are icy and glazed. But smelling calms you, reaches inside with warm arms and pats your heart and strokes your lungs. Smelling, then reading.

No matter what book you pick, there is a little introduction at the beginning.

You must never surrender your capacity to dream. Adults will say this word to you until it loses all meaning. Another gear in the sentiment machine, brazenly turning by the light of day until it means everything and nothing. But deep down we know all dreams begin in the dark.

You can go on an adventure now.