A thousand thoughts went through my head as I watched the house burn down.
How did this happen?
What do we do now?
All the Christmas presents.
The books.
Two days after Christmas I awoke to a shout of, "Christof's house is on fire!" We, his brothers, cousins, and myself, jumped out of bed, pulled our boots on, and ran down the hill to see the 30-year-old log cabin in flames. No one was hurt, thank God, but it was still numbing to watch all of our things, all of our memories, go up in smoke.
My boyfriend has, had, an extensive book collection. Picture books, books on carpentry, classics, theological texts, architectural manuals, children's chapter books, and the occasional oddball novel. There were hundreds of books, no exaggeration, that had found a home in his house. I can think of no one else who has had (or who will ever have) a shelf where a biography of Walt Disney stands next to Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
As cliched as it may sound, you really don't realize what you have until it's gone. More than three months later I still find myself remembering things that were lost that we hadn't catalogued. But of all the things that burned, the books are what I miss the most. It's going to take years for us to replace the collection, and we know that it's impossible for us to remember every single title we owned. We've made progress; we've looked in antique stores and local used bookshops and have stumbled across stories and books we had long since forgotten. It's a fresh start, a new beginning, but we do miss those books.
An event like this, one would think, would strengthen an argument for an e-book, or something like the iPad or the Kindle or the Nook. Something we paid that much for and that that's handy would be on our person 24/7, right? No cell phones were left behind in the house, or iPods, or laptops. If we had had an e-book we wouldn't be mourning the loss of a library, right?
How did this happen?
What do we do now?
All the Christmas presents.
The books.
Two days after Christmas I awoke to a shout of, "Christof's house is on fire!" We, his brothers, cousins, and myself, jumped out of bed, pulled our boots on, and ran down the hill to see the 30-year-old log cabin in flames. No one was hurt, thank God, but it was still numbing to watch all of our things, all of our memories, go up in smoke.
My boyfriend has, had, an extensive book collection. Picture books, books on carpentry, classics, theological texts, architectural manuals, children's chapter books, and the occasional oddball novel. There were hundreds of books, no exaggeration, that had found a home in his house. I can think of no one else who has had (or who will ever have) a shelf where a biography of Walt Disney stands next to Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
As cliched as it may sound, you really don't realize what you have until it's gone. More than three months later I still find myself remembering things that were lost that we hadn't catalogued. But of all the things that burned, the books are what I miss the most. It's going to take years for us to replace the collection, and we know that it's impossible for us to remember every single title we owned. We've made progress; we've looked in antique stores and local used bookshops and have stumbled across stories and books we had long since forgotten. It's a fresh start, a new beginning, but we do miss those books.
An event like this, one would think, would strengthen an argument for an e-book, or something like the iPad or the Kindle or the Nook. Something we paid that much for and that that's handy would be on our person 24/7, right? No cell phones were left behind in the house, or iPods, or laptops. If we had had an e-book we wouldn't be mourning the loss of a library, right?
Wrong.
If anything the fire has made me love books all the more. They are fragile and beautiful and meant to be treasured; they are read and re-read and passed on to friends. They've been to the beach and on the airplane, in bed and on a park bench. They've been admired by nieces and nephews and borrowed by college students unwilling to pay a hand and a leg for a newer edition. That can't be done with an e-book. It can't be personalized with a handwritten note and date. It doesn't leave behind traces of its owner, notes scribbled in the margins or tear and coffee stains.
It has often been said that the only way to become immortal is to create an immortal piece. A timeless story or a classic piece of art; something that can be admired by and that will resonate with generations to come. Well, computes are immortal, aren't they? Won't we someday be able to transfer our thoughts and our brains into robots and live forever, like some episode of The Twilight Zone or a bad Sy-Fy channel movie? But if the battery dies, if there's no one to charge it, won't it be just a blank screen? Text can live on. Look at the Dead Sea Scrolls, buried for centuries. Look at the Bible that President Obama took his oath with, the very same Bible that Abraham Lincoln used at his inauguration. Will our next president swear on top of a Mac Book?
Yes, books are fragile, but so is life. It's how it's supposed to be. Humans aren't supposed to live forever, but stories do. Those things cannot ever be truly lost, nor can they ever be truly replaced.
If anything the fire has made me love books all the more. They are fragile and beautiful and meant to be treasured; they are read and re-read and passed on to friends. They've been to the beach and on the airplane, in bed and on a park bench. They've been admired by nieces and nephews and borrowed by college students unwilling to pay a hand and a leg for a newer edition. That can't be done with an e-book. It can't be personalized with a handwritten note and date. It doesn't leave behind traces of its owner, notes scribbled in the margins or tear and coffee stains.
It has often been said that the only way to become immortal is to create an immortal piece. A timeless story or a classic piece of art; something that can be admired by and that will resonate with generations to come. Well, computes are immortal, aren't they? Won't we someday be able to transfer our thoughts and our brains into robots and live forever, like some episode of The Twilight Zone or a bad Sy-Fy channel movie? But if the battery dies, if there's no one to charge it, won't it be just a blank screen? Text can live on. Look at the Dead Sea Scrolls, buried for centuries. Look at the Bible that President Obama took his oath with, the very same Bible that Abraham Lincoln used at his inauguration. Will our next president swear on top of a Mac Book?
Yes, books are fragile, but so is life. It's how it's supposed to be. Humans aren't supposed to live forever, but stories do. Those things cannot ever be truly lost, nor can they ever be truly replaced.
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