Book Titles

I’ve been at school for eleven hours, but never in this corner of the library. The word on the shelf catches my eye: “Leviathan!” I think that word means something. Did I learn it once? “The Ascension.” Why am I so awake? Is it because the computer’s been staring at me, blank and bright, cubish and invasive? Or that I haven’t eaten since lunch? “Conrad.” Great name. That’d be a great name to have. Conrad. Conrad. I could have gone home. It’s weird not being able to edit my videos at home, instead sneakily logging on to iMovie in between the blocks of life - during lunch, during forbidden board meetings. Like surreptitious pot smoking. But funner. “DAN BROWN” A YouTuber I watch is also called Dan Brown. It’s not the same guy. I wonder if Dan Brown can only edit his videos at the library. If he has to put the files in the cloud and pull them down again in short spurts to be the way he is. It’s a weird feeling, making the bits before the whole. Like cooking the eggs before you make the cake. Or writing a book word by word, in random order. First the eighty-sixth word of Chapter 13, then the last word of the prologue, and so on. “Shadowcry!” Well, that doesn’t go with my ambiance at all. What’s the word for wide eyes, empty chest, the sensation of brain freeze but in your heart? Not unpleasant, per se. Just weird. “Cabot.” That makes me think of cheese. This thing I’ve never eaten but that everyone raves about. Much like Disney movies. Or sex. Or like Finland. I have no reason to suspect that Finland isn’t beautiful this time of year. But no one’s ever shown me the brochure. Even if they had, I strongly suspect that the the tentative three-fold slip of paper, glossed with images of mountains, yaks, hotels and fish - I strongly suspect it would have come in several pieces, and all in the wrong sequence. Scotch tape can only heal so many wounds, and the brochure is disjointed and crabby, a book written out of order. And, if given the choice, I often think I would choose to tear up the brochure. To hear the ecstatic rips and to watch the pieces float out into the breeze - fake blue sky against real blue sky. Feeling the warmth of the Swedish sun on my back, watching the mountains. Thinking, this country’s not so bad. Not so bad after all.