Her Handwriting In The Margin Of A Book

You were not looking for it.

You were after something else entirely, and you pulled the book off the shelf and it fell open at a page about two thirds through, and there in the margin, in pencil, in her hand, was a line and a date.

Nineteen seventy one. She would have been twenty three.

It is not a profound note. It is a remark, the sort of thing anybody writes in a margin, and it has one word underlined and a small mark beside it.

And you stood in that room holding it for about four minutes.

Here is what has happened since. The book has not gone back on the shelf. It is on the side, and it has been on the side for eleven days, and every time you pass it you notice it and every time you pass it you do not put it back.

And a small sensible voice has started saying that it is a book, and the shelf is right there, and this is becoming a thing.

I want to deal with that voice, because it is wrong about what is on that side table.

That is not a book with writing in it. That is the only place in the world where her hand moved, in a normal moment, when she was twenty three, and nothing else on earth has that.

Bring the books, and bring the parchments

There is a line in Paul's last letter that is one of the most human sentences in the whole New Testament.

The cloke that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments. (2 Timothy 4:13, King James Version)

A coat, some books, and especially the parchments. That is a man near the end of his life asking somebody to bring him his things.

Nobody in the history of that letter has ever suggested that Paul should have been beyond wanting his own books. The request stands in scripture, specific, unembarrassed, and it has the word especially in it.

You are wanting a particular object the way Paul wanted his own parchments, and wanting it has never once been beneath anybody. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman who has left something on a side table for eleven days, and Second Timothy 4:13 has an apostle ask for his books by name.

And look at the word especially.

He is not indifferent about which things come. There is a hierarchy in that sentence and the parchments are at the top of it, and the specificity is the human part.

You are being specific about one object in a book that is specific about objects, and the specificity has never once been a weakness. The written word records a dying man's request for particular things without one word of apology, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a woman who has read the same pencil line about forty times.

What is actually on the side table

Let me name what that object is, precisely, because the sensible voice has it filed wrong.

A photograph shows you what she looked like. A recording gives you her voice. Neither of those is her doing something.

A pencil line in a margin is her hand moving. In a particular second, in nineteen seventy one, she thought something about a sentence and reached for a pencil, and the mark on that page is the record of a small unrepeatable act.

You are holding the record of her hand moving, and a mark like that has never once been the same thing as a photograph. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman looking at a date in the margin of a book, and Second Timothy 4:13 asks for parchments, which are written things and not pictures.

And here is why it will not go back on the shelf.

The shelf is where books live. The moment it goes back, it becomes one of two hundred spines, and finding it again would require remembering which one, and some part of you has calculated that and refused.

That is not a failure to cope. That is a completely rational response to the risk of losing the only one of its kind.

You are protecting the only one of its kind, and eleven days on a side table has never once been a problem developing. The written word asks for the particular parchments and not for books in general, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a woman who has been quietly told off by her own sensible voice.

One door, and the book stays out

So here is today, and the book is not part of it.

Open a door. A wardrobe, a drawer, the room. Open it, look, close it again.

You are opening one thing and taking nothing out, and looking has never once been the start of a process. The Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman with her hand on a drawer, and Second Timothy 4:13 asks for particular things and stops there.

And leave the book exactly where it is.

If it is still on that side table in a year, that is a reasonable place for it to be. Nothing about a book being out rather than shelved is a sign of anything, and the sensible voice can be told that it has been overruled.

You are leaving it out for as long as it stays out, and where a book sits has never once been a report on anybody. The written word puts a specific request for objects in a letter written near the end of a life, and the Spirit of God is the one present with a woman who has stopped arguing with herself about a side table.