There’s More Than One Good Book
Comments: 1
I had a client meeting in Jinbocho, the publishing district, this morning. There are lots of bookstores in Jinbocho so after the meeting I decided to have a look around. I hadn’t been through the area in a few years.
I’d forgotten how wonderful it is - so many second-hand bookstores and rare book dealers. Stores devoted to books on music, film, maps, history, fine art, old prints, you name it. Books spilling out of shelves, literally spilling out of stores onto the street, books piled upon books. You wouldn’t think there could be so many in the whole world, that we could be so blessed. I caught myself mouthing the word “wow” over and over. An onlooker would have thought I’d never seen printed matter before.
But it was like I hadn’t. I held an 1854 edition of Paradise Lost on of the frontispiece of which, in a sturdy blue ink, one person had written to another, “With admiration and thanks for your friendship.” The book had been a gift almost a hundred and fifty years ago.
I thumbed through old books on Japanese textiles whose pages were the textiles they decribed. I saw maps by cartographers who we can only hope would be amused to learn that their real contribution to history has been their obsolesence.
You could spend a million dollars in Jinbocho in an afternoon and still have to make some tough choices.
So I was walking around mouthing wow… wow… to myself and breathing in deep buckram breaths - and then the terror struck: I will never catch up. Even if I gave up everything and did nothing but read for the rest of my life, I would never make anything more than the tiniest dent in the list of books that deserve to be read. Bring in all the other non-primary interest stuff you’d want to at least poke your nose into and you have the makings of a whole afternoon’s existential crisis.
I got on the train to head back to the office, popped in the headphones and cranked up the Dies Irae from Mozart’s Requiem in D minor. Just to remind myself that everything passes, we’re all going to die, and I shouldn’t take it too seriously.
What a foot-tappingly good memento mori that is! Cuts you down to size, puts you in your place and cheers you up all at the same time. Turns out I could remember the words (having had to learn them once for a school play - don’t ask) and I was all but singing along.
| Dies Irae! Dies illa! | Day of wrath, here it comes. |
| Solvet saeclum in favilla | Heaven and earth will burn! |
| teste David cum Sybilla. |
Thus David and Sybilla spake. |
| Quantus tremor est futurus, | You’ll be real scared |
| Quando judex est venturus, | When judgement comes, |
| Cuncta stricti discussurus. | So be good for goodness sake. |
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Posted to Books • 2002.02.06 (Wed) • 01:03
Comments
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens 2002.02.06, 03:46
Wow. This entry blew me away. I want to go to Jinbocho and flounder among the books. Even our little public library makes me feel drowned in words. It’s not just the oppressive weight of all the words I will never read that makes me gasp. It’s all the words I’ve written that are pale and insignificant, never to be read, and soon to be forgotten.
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