revelation

Today, I walked into an antique shop. I like to browse the old things—“treasures” the man at the shop called them.

I bought a pair of clip-on earrings, but I can’t even wear them because of my gauges, and they hurt my ears anyways. I got them because they remind me of my grandma. Both grandmas & their old jewelry boxes full of large, heavy clip-on earrings.

I bought a paperweight. It’s a delicate, egg-shaped mauve: heavy. It seemed like the thing to do—like every writer should have a nice glass paperweight. Also, it reminded me of 1984—buying a paperweight from an antique shop.

I have a problem with books; I even bought one of the four total at the antique shop of all places. It’s not that I want my life to echo the books I have loved; I certainly don’t. (Besides, who ever remembers the end of most books? You don’t; you remember the details in the middle. When your life is over, you’re just dead, and people have no choice but to remember that.) I love books because they let you relive the past, though not your own & often not even a past that ever was.

I went to my favorite used bookshop. I purchased the complete stories of Flannery O’Connor. I decided to read one out loud to Pickle this evening. I was about a paragraph—half a page, maybe—into a story when I froze. I suddenly remembered reading O’Connor’s “Revelation” out loud to Derek in the hospital. Then I remembered listening to her short stories on audiotape during the long commute back and forth to school after Derek died. I can hear the man on the tape’s voice reading the title “Everything that Rises Must Converge”. Most days I didn’t hear much more than the title; it was just noise to drown out all else but the passing lights on the highway.