"It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed." Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451For the last, oh, three months, probably more, I've driven my car with a trunk full of books. Plastic grocery bags briefly held the books, until they shifted and the books flooded out of the bags and settled themselves.
On one winter night, my wife and I reorganized our bookshelves, and purged a set we were sure we didn't need, and placed them in said grocery bags. I brought them optimistically to the local book re-seller, who lightened the bag by two or three which he considered re-sellable, leaving me to return the grocery bags, mostly unchanged, to my trunk, where they sat until today.
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". . . that this may be a sign among you. When your children ask in time to come, 'What do those stones mean to you?' then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever." Joshua 4:6-7
We've had a lot of blessings, especially over the past few years - obvious things we don't want to forget. I've thought often of making a pile of [something], just so we could remember how God has provided. The Israelites' stones were placed by the tribes, taken from the scene of their trials and God's providence. The stones weren't significant in themselves, but were significant because of who placed them and where they originated, and because of the stories that would be told.
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I had to get these books out of my trunk. It's been embarrassing. I carry boxes in my back seat because I don't want to open the trunk. One morning, my wife went to open the hatch, and I shouted, "No! Don't look in there!" I've never said that to her before. I've never kept a secret like this. It's embarrassing.
For a while, I tried to think of a redeeming metaphor for carrying books in one's trunk that no one wants. I tried. I thought of it almost every day when I went to work. I'm carrying these books around, like Coleridge's albatross, like DeNiro's suit of armor in The Mission - no, it's not like either of those. These are terrible books, they mean nothing to me, no regret, no guilt, no potential, no metaphor. These books were wasting my gas.
I've thought of tossing them in the recycling bin. That's not bad. Almost did it this week. But I didn't. After all, these are books. You can't throw them away.
I starting trying to think of other uses for them. Storing secret things by hollowing the cores, shellac effects, etc. This week, I got an idea. Ran the idea by my wife, she confirmed it was plausible, and had a chance to mean something. That was enough, and today I did it.
A 4' #4 rebar at Lowe's costs $2. Large galvanized washers are 45 cents. I drove the rebar vertically into a rotting stump in our backyard, secured a stop at about 8" above the stump, dropped on the washers.
I brought the plastic grocery book bags to the shop in our basement. I sorted them, to be sure, and marked an "X" in pencil on the exact center of the back cover, and drilled straight through.
Drilling through a book is more challenging than I expected. I started with a 7/8" hole saw. This worked well - the pilot bit pulled the sheets up a fair amount, but the saw pushed the books back together easily. The trouble came after drilling each book, when I had to drive out the cores of sheets packed up inside the bit. I tried a spade bit for a few books, but that really chewed up the pages and the soft covers. For the larger books, I had to drill half way through, from each side, cleaning out the bit in between sides.
And, there was a risk of fire. I often saw smoke and had to slow the process. The flits of print would make easy kindling, and there was a kind of fear of some retribution for the act, by forces unknown.
Some of the books were gifts of one kind or another. These were gifts from very special people, on special occasions. Some titles: Love for a Lifetime, Heart Centered Marriage, Stories for a Kindred Heart. Some were devotionals: Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy. One book, The Art of Natural Family Planning, with its unmentionable charts, seamed like a good idea at the time, but now seems so profoundly irrelevant. One was a gift from a missions organization, which I'll never read. Anything with discussion questions was apropos. There was a book titled How to Talk to Your Cat.
We did rescue a few books from the plastic grocery bags: Ice Bound, about the lady who had cancer at the South Pole, because it was interesting and true; a copy of the New Testament, which we were giving away because we had so many already; and, we found a book with an inscription, which meant we had to keep it.
Even as I set the last of these books on the stake, the sky started to rain. These stones, these inanimate objects are piled up now. Maybe it's a memorial, maybe it's a marker, maybe it's a way to get something out of my trunk. The colors in the yard are vivid now, but the books will weather and fade away, like prophecies, tongues, and knowledge. But, we remember the loved ones who gave us these books, and the occasions they represent, and the study groups who prayed with us: that memory and those gifts remain. We'll watch and see what happens to the rest!
