Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

July 29, 2003 - Book Assault
I spent the afternoon doing such fun things as writing a business brief on a pharmaceuticals company, writing another one about a financial company and in between sitting in a paper hospital gown on a cold table in a cold room, waiting for my doctor to remember I was there for my annual physical.

This left me very little energy to work on Musings, so instead, I'm going to share some recent finds. Someone in my neighborhood, it seems, has been destroying books.
          

The first page turned up on my lawn. It's clearly a burned page from a dictionary, pages 459 and 460. The heading on the top of page 459 says "knocker - knowledge" while the top of 460 says "knowledgeable - Ky." These are serendipitous to those of us who refuse to get our minds out of the gutter.

Included on the page are such words as: knuckleball, knucklehead, kook, Koran, Korean, kowtow, kremlin, krypton, Ku Klux Klan, kumquat, kung fu, Kurd, knowing and knowledge. I have to believe it was not the words on this particular page that offended. Rather, this was the page that escaped the flames, blew up into the air and left its cryptic message on my doorstep.

 
     

The next one I found while walking my dog, near a bus stop. It was apparently a page from an out-of-date encyclopedia. The very first entry was "AACHEN, WEST GERMANY," which the encyclopedia notes is "The most important gateway in and out of West Germany."

The page also includes entries for "AARDVARK," "AARDWOLF" and "ABACUS." The aardvark entry begins, "The aardvark, or 'earth pig,' is one of Africa's strangest animals." Perhaps this was the offending line that earned this page its demise, ripped asunder by someone with an aardvark penchant.

 

Then there's my favorite, this fascinating work of art apparently used as an inside cover. It's on a stiffer weight of paper and was also found near the bus stop, but on a different day.

A dark etching, the drawing shows Rodin's Thinker at the center, surrounded by gravestones, sailing ships, a globe, an Indian headdress, a telephone, an old camera, various farm implements, an airplane and my favorite: penguins!

The penguins give off an eerie, ominous glow. Since I'm assuming this page came from the same encyclopedia that the "A" page came from, I guess the penguins deserve their place of prominence, along with Rodin's Thinker and all of the 20th Century's greatest achievements. Still, I wish they'd stop glowing like that.

This page is such a marvel of craftsmanship I'm going to allow you to view it full size by clicking here.

And thus endeth the lesson for today.

Moral:
One person's trash, another person's art.

Copyright 2003 by Alyce Wilson

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