With Dark Star playing in the Background

23 January 2020 (One half)

The old man sat at the table.  A glance would easily reveal to anyone casually passing that he was quiet and focused. A book sat off to the side of the table where his bag and coat were arranged somewhat deliberately to discourage others from sitting with him.  

Clearly the man was not engaged in the book. fAt this moment his gaze was aimed out the large window near where he sat.  If the observer could peer inside the grey matter beneath the man’s uncombed hair, that busybody would see the man was drawn to the image of the winter wood just outside the window. The contrast of the brown-almost black wood, combined with the white snow covered ground, reminded him of the cover artwork of a musical album of his youth.  The old gent hummed a bit of one of its tunes, very softly.  Circumspect in remembering the tune the seated man kept his voice so very low; he would never, ever dare disturb any other library patron.

Sitting on the table top, the closed volume was one of those he could only consume in small bites.  Sometimes when you are reading something other than a pulp fiction novel, when the author of what you are reading is trying to say something substantive, you have to read and reread a page or a paragraph or a chapter.  When you are trying to digest such information you just have to stop and let what you read percolate through the labyrinth layers of the brain. The man had found this volume and clearly it was one like that.  As he worked through each subpart he stopped and thought about the assumptions the author was making but not stating.  Kind of a game really, he had taken just enough philosophy to be a danger to reading for pleasure.

In the man’s greying hair sate his glasses. The glasses often rested like this atop his head. Sometimes, the man simply found it easier to read with them resting on his thinning pate,  the was true despite the claims from his optician that his blended lens would do the trick.

One of the joys of retirement had been a return to reading.  The work he had done required a review of reams of paper per day.  Most of what he had to wade through while engaged in making an income, was written in pencil on stained paper with misspellings aplenty. Each sheet was a plea for aid, for relief.  Think of the children, think of the hardship, think of what has changed, each sheet touched on points such as these. When he was done his day of work, he did not want to read any more.  When he got home he simply wanted to be entertained,

He snapped out of his winter reverie.  He pulled to book back over.  The text was a collection of speeches from Nobel laureates.  Dense and intense were the speeches. A friend had urged him to pick it up and read a couple in particular.  Both were from winners of the prize for literature. He kept coming back to the concluding line from William Faulkner’s speech.

The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail - William Faulkner.

The man rose from the table.  He was off in search of poetry.  Somewhere here they must have a copy of Burnt Norton. Eliot must be close at hand.