I went to the library yesterday. I went looking for a book one of our friends told me of a while ago. I found it and then another.
It was a slow day, and I didn’t have any urgent place to be or thing to do. So I walked the aisles. I saw a book on an end of a row, and I picked it up and read the cover. I didn’t get it. I picked up another, and read its cover too; and I thought and wondered if there wasn’t a book out there that didn’t read on a half-page all the hype it could fit to try and attract the few searching readers among thousands of competitors that are likely never be enjoyed again, at least not for a while. I wondered how little of a library is actually checked out, and taken home.
Reading covers, I thought of an author you’d led me to. I was near to him, and so I searched. I didn’t find him; and then I searched a different section thinking I remembered his name wrong. Is it Walker Percy, or Percy Walker? I say it fifty-fifty, and its not because I don’t pay attention, its just something my mind scrambles; a detail less important than what it is he has to say.
He wasn’t in the “W”s either, and so I gave it little thought, yet passing back through “P”s, there he was (It is Percy Walker, not Walker Percy. I will remember this today and forget it again tomorrow as many of the facts that would be nice but lack an everyday utility)—multiple volumes. I read their covers too, I settled on one and then another, each half-page descriptor sounding more interesting than the last. Then a descriptor caught my attention and fixed my decision: “Lost Cove.”
Same name as Lost in the Cosmos, and to read its appearance again in a separate work: I had to know. Is symbology the same? What does it mean to him? All writers have their repetitions of allusion, the great and significant meanings they think they hide, but to one who becomes fascinated in spun and told worlds comes to see, pronounced and clear. I had to know, and it’s the one I chose.
I don’t know how many of his books you read, just that you led me to two, and I enjoyed them both. He tells again of a ridiculous world, of the need of man for purpose or calamity to give life to a world that otherwise feels adrift in pointless pursuits and comforts that quiet discernments of insanity (in ourselves or world—how can we judge when not aligned and one must be in fault).
Maybe we all need our fictions and our God, mediums to truth the immanent denies, flooding us with frivolities or nothing at all so as to either be blind or empty to epiphany.
So it is a story, again, with both; and I don’t know where it’s going and I don’t know how it ends, but I look forward to reading again of Lost Cove and seeing, in this story, what is there. Is it a strange signpost to guide for vision of future he truly sees but masks in fictions? Is that the way of modern prophets, to suggest what the knowing minds of present would readily and loudly ridicule, like Noah as he built?
I don’t know.
I wonder what you’d think of the story, what you’d have to say explaining his philosophy and faith that shape his fiction, but for that I’ll have to wait.
I thought of you, and wanted to write, even though you’re gone; and maybe it’s not all that different as when I wrote you at the end; when body and ability did not allow response. Maybe you can still see, receive, and find enjoyment in a trade of spirit; or maybe I’m just writing to myself.
Either way, I feel better wishing to express, and I wish you well—however and wherever that is in the after of whatever, wherever, of this.
I don’t have much else to say, just wanted to talk a book like we used to do; figured you were the one to go to. I look forward to a time when we can share again and laugh at the absurdities of it all—either the craziness of believed truths, or the extremity of our illusions.
I’m not worried about being right. I just pray to be amazed.
I guess I ought to get going. My back hurts, and I cut my hand building a desk to read and write on in the office. I won’t complain about either, just saying because they’re there, because I know it’s all a privilege while we last.
I hope you’re well. Know plenty still think of you, and—if able—send a few signs to those who need them. You know better than me. I’m good. You gave me plenty in gifts of stories and absurdities. Maybe some others could use something else.
I’ll keep living and reading and see if God is waiting at the end.
Your Friend, Byron