Story: 18. ) The Book that was an Island . . .

(from new manuscript of short stories about books:
A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE: A Rain of Booklight)


The Book that was an Island

  Idly I picked up a stone from beside me where I was sitting. A small, black pebble. I toyed with it in my hands awhile, deep in thought. The pebble was cool and smooth; mindlessly handling it was somehow comforting. A kingfisher flashed by. It shot from one side of the inlet to the other. It disappeared; leaving behind it a trailing image of blue and green. 

  After awhile something made me turn my head again, and I looked down at the place from where I had picked up the pebble. I replaced it. Beyond, about a metre or so away I saw a larger stone, roughly square-shaped, with a faint split down its centre, almost dividing it in half. It was a very unusual shape for a sea stone; and it reminded me of something. So I stood up, and went over to it. I lifted it from the ground to look at it more closely. The split was actually a line of white quartz.

  Help is never very far away. Suddenly a string of instantaneous images flashed a path through my midst like a kingfisher’s dive opening and lighting a hidden story to tell; the truth that was in me suddenly given shape and form; a body and a substance in which to express it. I was amazed. I smoothed the book stone, and gave thanks in my heart. Gently I returned it to its place and walked on down the shallow inlet towards the beach. Walking along the sandy shore I noticed the few sea-tossed stones scattered there, and the strange sequence of images I had fleetingly seen; of people being like ‘pages’ and books being like ‘islands.’ After awhile the images fell into an order, and made sense: infused with love. When I got home I wrote the story. (It was from this that the idea came for the poem or ‘ragged writing:’ A Book is like a Sacred Isle.)

  It was in the beginning. And in the beginning was a vast sea. Up from the midst of the sea I saw an island appear. The island was one great stone made of many pages which had a lived history written within them, and so they lived. The pages had been gathered into one place. Sewn together they had become the book which was the island, which lived.

  Time passed. The island grew. For another whole set of pages was found. These were gathered and sewn together as the first were, and they were added to the first which then became one single book. And the book was as a mighty rock, a sacred island, and became a stone of stumbling in the world, and a rock of offence.

   In time an explosion of light shook the world. In the fiery light the island was split, and divided, and multiplied; and became as millions of tiny islets which went into all the world. Each of the tiny isles were as parts of the book that was an island; and they were people.

  The islets began to understand their pages; and they were very pleased with their understanding. The more they thought they knew and understood of the history of the world written on the pages, the more they were separate and the sea increased around them and they were further away. They did not know that they could never really comprehend it.

  The more they studied it the more they gathered themselves together and became separate from the world; for the islets unconsciously measured everything by their knowledge. Wherever their measure was their own knowledge, there was not love. So the world filled with millions of tiny islets that held tightly to their own knowledge, and wouldn’t let go.

  Time passed. The sea grew. The world grew. Some of the islets had learned in the explosion of light the true way to know their book – by letting it go:  so that it could ‘go!’ Their pages were full of the energy of love: and light. They had learned this ‘back-to-front’ way to understand their book, and they were no longer separate: bridges went from them across the sea into the world.

  Now there were two forms of islets in the sea. Those which clung to their knowledge, their light was dim. But those which released their knowledge, and let it go for love; their light was bright and shone as a lamp all around about them.

  People and the ancient history Book, which are understood by the mind alone are only half seen, and limited; but those understood with the inner spirit of love are seen more, and are limitless; but, it takes a miracle for it to happen.

  It could be that miracles happen if one probes and questions the boundaries of one’s world: believing that what lies beyond its horizons is really there and waiting. The doorway is real because we know it is there. The haunting is real, too; for there is ‘an unsatisfied desire’ in us, ‘more desirable than any other satisfaction.’  (C S Lewis)

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