Through Ignorance, Through Faith, Through Intelligence, Through

In The Dark, With The Windows Lit And The Rows Of Books Glittering, The Library Is A Closed Space, A Universe Of Self-serving Rules That Pretend To Replace Or Translate Those Of The Shapeless Universe Beyond.

Books May Not Change Our Suffering, Books May Not Protect Us From Evil, Books May Not Tell Us What Is Good Or What Is Beautiful, And They Will Certainly Not Shield Us From The Common Fate Of The Grave. But Books Grant Us Myriad Possibilities: The Possibility Of Change, The Possibility Of Illumination.

Nothing Moves Except My Eyes And My Hand Occasionally Turning A Page, And Yet Something Not Exactly Defined By The Word "text" Unfurls, Progresses, Grows And Takes Root As I Read. But How Does This Process Take Place?

We Can Roam The Bloated Stacks Of The Library Of Alexandria, Where All Imagination And Knowledge Are Assembled; We Can Recognize In Its Destruction The Warning That All We Gather Will Be Lost, But Also That Much Of It Can Be Collected Again; We Can Learn From Its Splendid Ambition That What Was One Man's Experience Can Become, Through The Alchemy Of Words, The Experience Of All, And How That Experience, Distilled Once Again Into Words, Can Serve Each Singular Reader For Some Secret, Singular Purpose.

But A Reader's Ambition Knows No Bounds.