November 20, 2006
Boredom
Boredom is a personal insult. Somebody said that at a Twelve-Step meeting one time. I suspect they meant that boredom is that state of affairs not only when one cannot stand the company one keeps, but when one cannot even stand to keep one’s own company, no matter who’s around. Maybe it’s something like being alone in a crowd.
I am not often bored. Neither because I haven’t been a lot in the past nor because my own company is so hands-down charming that I can hardly stand myself, but because I’m curious and there’s always so little time. There’s just out and out too much to learn out there for in and in not to gain in here.
Which brings me to books. Even our own library, as limited and pathetic as it may be, yet strikes my curiosity a blow most every time I walk by any of the several places it’s shelved. It’s not easy to avoid. It reminds me most not of what I know, but of what I don’t know, and then it is always barbed with intentions, those paving stones to you know where.
Marriage affects libraries. Especially the collections of two curious people the second time around and who’ve been around for a while and have not-so-gently entered into what has been called an intercultural exchange. Merging libraries is something like merging curiosities, especially those of a librarian and a parson. But one must always use care whose books are mixed with whom’s.
One of my favorite word stories is about a little boy who lived in a town not actually on a map, but in a Broadway play by William Saroyan. It’s called “The Human Comedy.” A scene shows him in his public library wandering alone away from his older sister, back into the stacks. Rows and rows of books tower over him in long, dark, seemingly ominous shelves. He looks up in wonder, considers them carefully, and says in almost breathless awe, “Words, millions of words.”
Even God must have thought fondly of such when she chose a special one to become flesh that finally caught that old evangelist John’s attention. Now who could possibly be bored in a situation like that?