Dozens and dozens of novels are sitting on my bedroom’s shelves. Sci-fi novels, fantasy novels, works of Italian literary fiction, and even avampire romance—they’re all sitting with their spines towards me, like an audience of mummies.
I’ve read most of them, while others I received as a present and never touched since. But regardless of whether I opened them or not, they all make me think one way or another. Right now, they’re making me think of how little I remember of them.
I think of all the books in the world, all those stacks of paper filling the walls of houses, libraries and bookstores from Mexico City to Timbuctoo. Thousands of billions of books containing people and places and days of war and nights of love, and so much… life, I suppose I could say.
But they’re not alive at all, are they? Books don’t walk, they’re not my friends, they don’t give me advice. I just open them, read them and entertain their ideas for a while, and then next year I hardly remember a thing of what they were about.
As a writer, this realization hits me hard in the guts. I always thought this ‘writing a novel’ business would give me a chance to change someone’s life for the better, to make me immortal in a way; but the truth is that whatever I put out there, no matter how perfectly crafted it is, will eventually fade. It’s depressing.
It’s also a pretty childish thought, I tell myself as I walk to the kitchen to fix myself a cup of tea. Two sips of the stuff later, and I’m already thinking of something else.
Two days later, I’m walking on my favorite dirt road, a little way off town. I look up at the canopies of the oaks, and see that the leaves are still there, but the green of the past summer is already draining from them. It’s a pretty common sight, here in the outskirts, and yet the sight affects me enough to make me stop for a full five minutes.
I wonder why, though. Is it because I’ve played the Kings of Convenience on repeat for the past week? Is the post-holiday depression still playing tricks on me (even though I used my amazing method to fend off my after-holiday depression)? Or is it because the sight’s reminding me of something…?
That’s when I remember the bookshelf, and that short dumb thought I’ve had about novels being destined to fade from memory. Because right now I’m staring at things that are also faded, or about to fade.
Still, I feel like today’s thought is laced with a more positive sentiment. These leaves might be done for, and nothing about of them will remain by the spring of next year, but by living and dying they have effectively changed the tree, haven’t they?
And I suppose it’s the same for stories. They are frivolous things, sticking to our head only temporarily; but they’re able to change us, and let us see things differently. Even if that ‘us’ is just the person who writes them.
A gust of wind flows through the canopies like a wave of invisible water, making several leaves abandon their branches and glide gently to the ground. One lands at my feet. I pick it up, smile, then I go back home and put it in the next book I’m going to read.