The Great Superpositions Of Life

They keep getting lost. First, it was André Breton. He disappeared from the shelf. I looked everywhere. Under the bed, behind the refrigerator, even in the refrigerator. I might’ve mistaken him for a piece of ham. I hadn’t. I found the book in the exact spot where I’d put it, where I’d looked a dozen times, but missed seeing it, like all the typos and misspellings I don’t see until a book is published.

Then it was Henri Michaux. I looked everywhere. Same routine. Under the bed, behind the refrigerator, and in the refrigerator, thinking he might be there, picking his teeth, combing his hair, masquerading as a cube of goat cheese.

He wasn’t there. There was a bottle of grape juice, a jar of kalamata olives, a jar of strawberry jam, but no Michaux. No jar of Michaux. No jar ajar. No slap gun, no jetty, no camels. I took a swig of juice and renewed my expedition.

This search continued longer than the one for André Breton. I started to wonder if I had actually bought the book. Maybe I’d only imagined buying it. Maybe I imagined the book itself. Had I imagined a book that didn’t even exist? Had I written a body of work for a book by Henri Michaux? Had I done this in my sleep? In a waking sleep? Had I scribbled notes and rhymes while riding a camel across a hypnopompic Sahara?

Have I lost it? Am I nuts? Have books done this to me? Have books opened more dimensions than I can handle?

I have a lot of books. Hundreds. It’s a huge collection. All of it disorganized. Why have I not organized my books? Because I spend all my time reading them. I find nooks for them where they seem to belong, neighborhoods of books where the writing seems to harmonize and contrast with one another in ways that make sense as a carnival of words, a large quantum superposition, so that Shakespeare and Henry Miller can coexist like pyromaniacs in a match factory, and Schrödinger’s cat can wander freely among the great superpositions of life.

It’s a chaos with an inner, intuitive logic. But there are times when that intuitive logic goes awry. I can’t find a book and go crazy looking for it.

I send my eyes on frantic journeys back and forth, back and forth, title upon title upon title, where is it? Where is that infernal so-and-so? I swear I put it here. Right between Lucretius and Dylan.

It’s so odd, living among all these books. What am I doing with all these books? I can’t possibly read them all. It’s frustrating to see them. They’re all so enticing. And now that I’m nearing the end of my life, there’s a greater urgency to take them all in. We’re in a twilight together. They could end up in the hands of other readers when I’m gone, but I doubt it. The planet itself is in jeopardy. The polar ice cap is melting. It’s been reduced to the size of a welcome mat. The glaciers are disappearing. The oceans are dying. The coral is bleached. The starfish are mush. Greenland looks like someone pulled the blanket away from an old dying man. It’s unlikely there will be libraries in the future. There are more apt to be deserts and craters.

There was a time people prided themselves on their books. A few books meant you had a mind. A lot of books meant you lost your mind.

Now they just seem weird. They have a feeling of obsolescence. You very rarely see books in people’s houses anymore. You see smartphones, plasma TV screens, laptops and video game accessories. That’s our culture now.

Maybe that’s why I go crazy when I lose a book. I think I’m feeling frustrated and sad for something larger that’s been lost.