CPR for Drowned Books
Books were among the casualties of the September 26 floods. Given the widespread human tragedy it may seem insensitive to worry about printed matter, but if you love books the loss of a library, no matter how small, is a terrible blow. It is hard to explain to people who only open books when they need answers to specific questions (assuming they cannot consult Google), but those books are our friends. Their characters are as real to us as the people we meet in school or at work, and our relationships with these fictions are often more satisfying than our dealings with flesh and blood humans.
When you survey your water-damaged books you may allow yourself a moment of despair, but do not blame yourself for not being able to save them. What should you have done as the raging floodwaters burst into your ground floor, lift an entire bookshelf up two flights of stairs? You had family and pets to worry about, forgive yourself for not being Superman. It will take more than a cataclysm to kill Falstaff, Odysseus, the Bennets and Karamazovs, Pip, Eustacia Vye, Wart, and all our fictional intimates, including Superman. In the first place many of these characters were already killed off by their own authors, but they live forever in the literary universe.
CPR for Drowned Books in Emotional Weather Report (Gadgets) in the Star.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
October 12th, 2009 at 10:46
There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry—
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without opress of Toll—
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human soul
-There is no Frigate like a Book by Emily Dickinson
October 13th, 2009 at 14:54
Took me 15 years to collect all those books–almost half my life really. I was bagging them in black garbage bags because I had to acknowledge that I couldn’t restore them anymore. I told myself I could just slowly rebuild my library until I came across the Flip issue which had Satur Ocampo, Teddyboy Locsin & Imee Marcos on the cover. I was just out of college and starting to work when that came out. I had all the issues, and now they had turned to mulch.
October 14th, 2009 at 17:24
Same here. The books I’ve lost look like tombstones scattered all over my floor.