Sacred Text

As a college student one of the hardest things I had to learn was to write in my own books. Having grown up with an English teacher for a parent I was taught from an early age that you don't write in books. Ever since then anything in print has always been sacrosanct to me. It's why I erase anything I find in any of the used books I buy. It's why I wanted to blow up at my mother when she cut herself out of a picture of mine several years ago. Like Mel Brooks, who could write then erase anything as long as it was in pencil but hated to mark anything that was typed, I have found it very hard to write on my own printed essays (Why does the plural of essay still have a Y in it?).

Just looking at a computer screen you can see what I mean; you feel your eyes get tried and after a while no matter how good what your reading is you find that you have to stop. But if you find yourself in a really good book you can read it cover to cover no matter how strained your eyes might become. The same with a picture, if it's printed you might run your finger tips over it as though you can feel the contours of its subject. If you do the same on a computer screen you notice that it just isn't the same; it's as thought there is a layer between you and the picture.

Things on a screen are temporary and changeable, the things you hold in your hands are not. So to write on a book for me is a profound act. Whatever marking I make must have the greatest reason for being there. I doubt I could ever use a study Bible.