Wrist Deep

So there’s this book. You know this book. You’ve probably picked it up at your nearest Borders or Barnes & Noble. You’ve probably been intrigued as I was when I first saw the book. When I first picked it up I was enamored with the cover. The cover was the thing. I truly believe that you can judge a book by its cover. So I picked it up. Sat down. It was bright. Too bright for reading.

Let’s pretend you are me and you are the one sitting in a large bright room and all there is is this small beautiful book in your lap and you are alone. Are you alone yet? Okay. Let’s begin.

In this book are all of the strange and wonderful things that have ever happened in your life. You can’t understand at first. That is understandable. The pictures within it are pictures of you. In some of them you are crying. In most of them you are laughing. You are happy about that part. This book is not broken up into chapters as you thought it would have been. Strangely enough, this book that you are holding now in your lap (it is so heavy now, you realize) has no parts, no segments, and no dividers. There are not even paragraphs. Here you are; you are a baby. You are being washed. You don’t even recognize yourself. You are so small. You are so contrary to what you think you have become. Where did these pictures come from, you might be asking yourself now. And as you ask, flashes of what you were come on like strange movies projected across the backs of your eyes. Here is a picture of you discovering grass for the first time, you picking it out of the ground and suckling the yellow tubers. Here, you digging in the sand, digging as deep as you can dig. This picture is of you next to a tree. You look happy in it. When did you ever look so happy as you did in that picture of you next to that tree? Here is the picture that was taken when you were opening a present you didn’t want. Here is the picture of you with a splinter in your finger. Here are the pictures in which you are crying. Do you remember when being sad used to be so easy, so uncomplicated? Do you remember hanging over your knees like a badly carven statue? Do you remember becoming limestone in the dark cold pressure of the upper mantle? Those pictures are there as well.

But — this picture book, this pop-up book of memories, this pop-up book of joy, this strange and sad little book of everything you’ve ever known — this book belongs to you; within it’s stitches you are stitched. You can do with it what you want. Have it. I do not want it anymore. Rip from it the pages you do not want. Earmark the pages you love (honestly, those are my favorite pages, too). Read them over and over again. It is your book. Write notes in the margins. Dirty it with your fingerprints. Ruin the pages with your love. Scrape them to bits with your want. Burn them in the furnace of your heart. Make this book your own. Make it belong to you. Because it is yours. Because it has always belonged to you.

Because your strange book is beautiful; and, strangely enough, you are too.