{"id":4815,"date":"2023-08-25T15:58:56","date_gmt":"2023-08-25T22:58:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/?p=4815"},"modified":"2025-03-06T21:00:35","modified_gmt":"2025-03-07T05:00:35","slug":"the-book-fairies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/the-book-fairies\/","title":{"rendered":"The Book-Fairies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Mother always warned me about the Book-Fairies.
\n<\/span>I held them in greater awe than even the Christian
\n<\/span>God during the two brief phases in my life
\nWhen I lived in fear and trembling of Him.
\nThe first was at the innocent age of five
\n<\/span>When I had my tonsils and adenoids out
\n<\/span>And was discovered to be seriously myopic.
\n<\/span>Then at eleven, less innocent, I stumbled upon
\nMasturbation and became persuaded
\n<\/span>Each instance of the strange, compulsive
\n<\/span>Spasms it occasioned was cause for dire
\n<\/span>Punishment, perhaps the gruesome deaths
\n<\/span>Of my parents when they were out in a car
\n<\/span>And I was baby-sitting the younger siblings.<\/p>\n

To be said in their favour, the Book-Fairies
\nWere generally aligned on the side of illicit
\n<\/span>Pleasure: reading, the solitary vice which
\n<\/span>I thought I had personally devised long before<\/span>
\n<\/span>A surge of fresh hormones enabled the other
\n<\/span>Gratification I also presumed, for a while,<\/span>
\nTo be my very own. But the Book-Fairies
\n<\/span>Could nonetheless wreak Furies-like
\n<\/span>Vengeance on those who unwisely harm books.
\nThe dogging of ears, defacing the pages, stressing
\n<\/span>The binding of books were infractions beyond appeal.<\/span>
\nLibrarians, past whom it was possible
\n<\/span>To slip inadvertently damaged volumes, were<\/span>
\nA comparatively forgiving bunch.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unlike the Book-Fairies, they were
\n<\/span>Not privy to the immediate scenes of crime,
\n<\/span>Unable to spy through my own eyes to catch<\/span>
\nThe slightest trespass or trangression.<\/p>\n

We could construe this decidedly panoptic
\nInner censorship as quintessentially Protestant,
\nThough it now seems to me that, after suffering
\n<\/span>The two aforementioned passing bouts
\n<\/span>Of monotheism, like childhood measles or mumps,
\n<\/span>I embraced a form of polymorphous animism,
\n<\/span>Accepting that some daemons (not all\u00a0
\n<\/span>Of whom were benign) lodge within, that I was<\/span>
\nBeholden to all which are properly mine.
\n<\/span>Especially the tutelary Book-Fairies.<\/p>\n

Admittedly, I did not devise reading
\n<\/span>On my lonesome. I was taught to at four
\n<\/span>By Granny, Mother’s Mother, a Southern<\/span>
\nIron maiden who was driven by spirits of her own,
\n<\/span>Among them the urge to transmit something
\n<\/span>Of her own intelligence to the sickly,
\nBrooding and introspective child I was.\u00a0
\n<\/span>She had been a school marm before marrying.
\nThen, after my grandfather\u2019s death by street-car
\n<\/span>In the\u00a0Houston Heights\u00a0(average el. 92 ft.),
\n<\/span>She became a secretary on refinery row.
\n
\nPerhaps it is a false memory, but I recollect<\/span>
\nThe process of learning to read as having been<\/span>
\nInstantaneous, of a single piece.
\n<\/span>There are after all only twenty-six letters and,
\n<\/span>Despite slander to<\/span>\u00a0 the contrary, they do<\/span>
\nmore or less capture the sounds of English.
\n<\/span>There did remain the problem of their orientation,
\n<\/span>Pointing right as opposed to left, and their order,
\n<\/span>Easily permutated, recombined, transposed.
\nMy dyslexia was mild, but affects me to this day.
\nIn any event, the words to be found in books
\n<\/span>Were vastly more numerous than those I had
\n<\/span>Encountered before or did for many years.
\n<\/span>So from early on I had a large reading vocabulary
\n<\/span>To which I would resort by default, chronically
\n<\/span>Mispronouncing words in common use,
\n<\/span>Having read them long before I heard them.<\/p>\n

As for the Book-Fairies, to this day when I do
\nRead a cellulose book I inscribe marginal notes
\nOnly sparingly in soft graphite pencil,
\n<\/span>Promising myself to return with an art gum
\nEraser, a product whose aroma I relish.
\nThe internet will arrive at its dystopian
\n<\/span>Perfection when we attach not only images
\n<\/span>And sounds but also smells to a page;
\n<\/span>Here, for example, emitting in a molecular
\n<\/span>Burst an olfactory simulacrum of crumbled<\/span>
\nArt gum, no doubt the votive offering
\nPreferred by the lares which watch over books.
\n<\/span>I suspect many readers would not need
\n<\/span>That trigger. Words themselves do the job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mother always warned me about the Book-Fairies. I held them in greater awe than even the Christian God during the two brief phases in my life When I lived in fear and trembling of Him. The first was at the innocent age of five When I had my tonsils and adenoids out And was discovered … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Book-Fairies”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4815"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5032,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4815\/revisions\/5032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}