Below is an excerpt from a one-man show. I wished I have posted something original. I am currently gestating (hmmm...pregnant thought there hehehe) about the things i've heard, seen and learned from the theological conference i attended last week. There were papers that strongly resonated with my being, things that excited me and challenged me (there were others too that vaguely disgusted me, irritated me, or simply just bored to me). So you see, i do have a lot of materials i can write about...but nothing. The blinking cursor mocks my inability to tap a passable dance (to borrow aleks' metaphor). This week is strangely stressful for me, hence, the writer's block (excuses, excuses)...Next week will be filled with a lot of challenges too...loaded with possibilities...expectant of things to come...it is a birthing, so to speak, of a future. I wish there was an easier way to make choices and decisions, but as the way we reach the most important things in life is, we (I) have to go through yet another dark night of the soul trying to wrestle and hope to come up with an answer soon. Enigmatic, huh? I wish the process was less painful, less like going through an operation without anesthetics (or delivering a baby without the painkiller? notice my obsession with pregnant metaphors. i wonder why? ). Aaaargh!
And without further adieu...i give you...Bibliomania. Enjoy. Find resonance in his wisdome. Ha.
BIBLIOMANIA
By
Roger Rosenblatt
The following is an excerpt from Bibliomania, a one-man show written and first performed by the noted essayist Roger Rosenblatt at New York's American Place Theater in 1994.
The custom of borrowing books confutes nature. In every other such situation, the borrower becomes a slave to the lender, the social weight of the debt so altering the balance of a relationship that a temporary acquisition turns into a permanent loss. This is certainly true with money. Yet it is not at all true with books. For some reason a book borrower feels that a book, once taken, is his own. This removes both memory and guilt from the transaction. Making matters worse, the lender believes it, too. To keep up appearances, he may solemnly extract an oath that the book be brought back as soon as possible; the borrower answering with matching solemnity that the Lord might seize his eyes were he to do otherwise. But it is all play. Once gone, the book is gone forever. The lender, fearing rudeness, never asks for it again. The borrower never stoops to raise the subject.
There's no spectacle that is as terrifying as the sight of a guest in your house whom you catch staring at your books. It is not the judgmental possibility that is frightening. The fact that one's sense of discrimination is exposed by his books. Indeed, most people would much prefer to see the guest first scan, then peer and turn away in boredom or disapproval. Alas, too often, the eyes, dark with calculation, shift from title to title as from floozie to floozie in an overheated dance hall. Nor is that the worst. It is when those eyes stop moving that the heart, too, stops.
The guest's body twitches; his hands floats up to where his eyes have led it. There is nothing to be done. You freeze. He smiles. You hear the question even as it forms: "Would you mind if I borrowed this book?" Mind? Why should I mind? The fact that I came upon that book in a Paris bookstall in April, 1969, the thirteenth, I believe it was, the afternoon, it was drizzling - that I found it after searching all of Europe and North America for a copy; that it is dog eared at passages that mean more to my life than my heartbeat; that the mere touch of its pages recalls to me in a Proustian shower my first love, my best dreams. Should I mind that you seek to take all that away? That I will undoubtedly never get it back? Then even if you actually return it to me one day, I will be wizened, you cavalier, and the book spoiled utterly by your mishandling? Mind?!
"Not at all. Hope you enjoy it."
"Thanks, I'll bring it back next week."
"No rush. Take your time." [Liar.]
"Never lend books - nobody ever returns them;
the only books I have in my library are those
which people have lent me"
-Anatole France
That's one of my bookcases...I'm thinking of putting a lock on the glass shelves...that way when someone tries to borrow a book, i'd pretend that i cannot find the keys. Hahaha! Is that good plan or is that a good plan?! I'm not sure if that would work though.
And without further adieu...i give you...Bibliomania. Enjoy. Find resonance in his wisdome. Ha.
BIBLIOMANIA
By
Roger Rosenblatt
The following is an excerpt from Bibliomania, a one-man show written and first performed by the noted essayist Roger Rosenblatt at New York's American Place Theater in 1994.
The custom of borrowing books confutes nature. In every other such situation, the borrower becomes a slave to the lender, the social weight of the debt so altering the balance of a relationship that a temporary acquisition turns into a permanent loss. This is certainly true with money. Yet it is not at all true with books. For some reason a book borrower feels that a book, once taken, is his own. This removes both memory and guilt from the transaction. Making matters worse, the lender believes it, too. To keep up appearances, he may solemnly extract an oath that the book be brought back as soon as possible; the borrower answering with matching solemnity that the Lord might seize his eyes were he to do otherwise. But it is all play. Once gone, the book is gone forever. The lender, fearing rudeness, never asks for it again. The borrower never stoops to raise the subject.
There's no spectacle that is as terrifying as the sight of a guest in your house whom you catch staring at your books. It is not the judgmental possibility that is frightening. The fact that one's sense of discrimination is exposed by his books. Indeed, most people would much prefer to see the guest first scan, then peer and turn away in boredom or disapproval. Alas, too often, the eyes, dark with calculation, shift from title to title as from floozie to floozie in an overheated dance hall. Nor is that the worst. It is when those eyes stop moving that the heart, too, stops.
The guest's body twitches; his hands floats up to where his eyes have led it. There is nothing to be done. You freeze. He smiles. You hear the question even as it forms: "Would you mind if I borrowed this book?" Mind? Why should I mind? The fact that I came upon that book in a Paris bookstall in April, 1969, the thirteenth, I believe it was, the afternoon, it was drizzling - that I found it after searching all of Europe and North America for a copy; that it is dog eared at passages that mean more to my life than my heartbeat; that the mere touch of its pages recalls to me in a Proustian shower my first love, my best dreams. Should I mind that you seek to take all that away? That I will undoubtedly never get it back? Then even if you actually return it to me one day, I will be wizened, you cavalier, and the book spoiled utterly by your mishandling? Mind?!
"Not at all. Hope you enjoy it."
"Thanks, I'll bring it back next week."
"No rush. Take your time." [Liar.]
"Never lend books - nobody ever returns them;
the only books I have in my library are those
which people have lent me"
-Anatole France
That's one of my bookcases...I'm thinking of putting a lock on the glass shelves...that way when someone tries to borrow a book, i'd pretend that i cannot find the keys. Hahaha! Is that good plan or is that a good plan?! I'm not sure if that would work though.
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