So I'm tunnelling my way through the BIG ARSE THEMATIC ESSAY and I'm about a little over half-way. In order to complete it, I had to take a book out of the University library.
Now for some reason or another, I love old books. There's just something kind of special about holding something that dozens or even hundreds of people have held before you.
The book I'm using was printed roughly eighteen years ago. That's nearly as old as me! It's not quite the same with REALLY ancient books in museums, because they've sort of lost their magic. You know that they've been in a glass box for fifty years and people only touch it them with latex gloves and tongs.
But do you know what the best part is? A legacy.
The book I'm using is full of old notes in the margin, Half-Blood Prince style. It's really fascinating to imagine who left those notes, where they were, where they are now.
Now some of them were a little wrong ('A burning forehead, and a parching tongue' is NOT "sad after sex so it's gd". Personally I took it to mean that the figures upon the vase existed in a perfect, timeless world where their love would never fade, as opposed to love in a transient timeline, which Keats believes will eventually go sour. But I digress) but that doesn't detract from the brilliance of it one bit.
Part of me is tempted to leave something completely nonsensical in there, just so I can imagine someone else taking the book out in another twenty years, and having a little chuckle.
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