Purgidross

Today is a holy day, because I made it so.

Purgidross. A simple notion. Get rid of the clutter in your life to make room for more. Remove your own trash so that it might become someone else’s treasure. Gift another with something important to you. Let the library spread beyond its borders.

It is not such a difficult thing, to invite grace into your life. Grace is when you lay out all your tools on a table and use each in turn to fix something in your house before tucking them away just as effortlessly as they appeared, so that by that little action, putting up a few hooks, lighting a candle beneath a clay sculpture – the world becomes a bit more beautiful, a bit more functional, a bit more you. Grace is when words come easily, because they must, because they exist invisible at the hanging end of each sentence, and while some would fight them, muse over them and worry about them incessantly, those words are always there, and will always come. Grace is submitting to their story and becoming a conduit for their will.

Reap, and sow. Today I took two books from my library. One I loved. Fly by Night has a special place in my heart, rich with the puissance of floating coffee houses and inky melodies, and history come alive. It’s a story about how words have the power to change everything. I hate to see it go, but it is time. I’ll find another copy. But today is Purgidross, and it must be read again.

I left a letter in the cover. It gave these words:

Sojourner,

This book is for you. It’s an old favourite of mine. A friend I have carried with me through the years, and who carried me too, when I needed it. It’s time for it to find someone else now, keep doing its work in the way that books do, as much as I adore it and would hold it close to my core.

Whoever you are, know that I love you. You are dear to me. You matter, though I may never know your name.

And I meant every one. There’s a shopping mall nearby where I do my lifts, and it has a glass elevator along the side of one of the main chambers. I called it from the top floor, left the book dead centre on the elevator’s floor, and turned away as the doors sealed it within. I did not see who found it. That is not important. What is important is that someone did find it, and upon seeing that book there waiting for them, a small miracle implanted within an ordinary day, they may just read it, and it may make them think deeper than they have in a long while. I’m a literary terrorist, you see. I tape bombs to people’s minds and blow them apart. On good days, that is.

The other book was not so special. Not to me. As I read through Dragon Horse, I found it the most depressing story in all creation. Evil wins every battle and celebrates with maniacal laughter. The protagonists are always too late, too slow, too trusting. They win by default, and learn little. While I still horde books greedily and never let any of the stories I have read vanish from my burgeoning mind-trap, this one needed to leave. Not because I disliked it, but because someone else may like it more. Keeping it somewhere where it would be resented when it might do good for someone else and suit their character – that is a crime against all endeavor.

I did not put the same note in this book. I left a poem:

Seven spindles top down turning,

Gyrating on the verge,

Dervishes hearing music in revolution

Until brick by brick

Slate by slate

Stick by stick

All things wind down

Towers topple

Sweeping hazard ever closer to the horizon,

Jousting as they go

‘Til worn out by their deep reap

They go rolling off under chairs and down gutters

To places where they cannot dance

But lie waiting for hands to pick them up,

And try again.

That message was true too, though its medium was more obscure. It was sort of an apology, I suppose. My way of saying, “This book sucks, but here’s some prosy so it isn’t a complete waste of time.” This book I left at the end of one of those long aisles at the post office, among the faceless blue cells of that much-worded place.

You know what? It made me feel great. Supernatural. Yes, dear reader, there are people who do silly, unworldly things like leave books out in the open for others to find them. There are people who write poems for no greater purpose than to make strangers feel there might be someone out there who cares about them. I know this, because I am this. I can smile my crooked smile and think to myself I am the Sixth World Librarian, and go about my sacred duty. Today that duty was Purgidross.

So I resumed my writing at home, I tended to the garden and saw what new plants had done well in the summer. And after dusk, I put some cushions out on the deck and meditated in the darkness above the swampy expanse of the pool. The City courses with life at all hours; traffic, sirens, pets and children, dinner parties and music – a million distractions that you would never find in a monastery or reserve. They fit me. In their primal chaos, I’m tucked away in my own space, listening to their heartbeat.

I imagined my way into the great atrium of my mind where I go to begin all my mental journeys, and I added the memory of Fly by Night in the middle of the elevator, sealed away and swooping down. Shadowed figures move within the glass tube like flecks in a snow globe. They are all the possibilities of who the book shall find. It comforts me to have that here.

Thoughts race, and then settle. The rituals are over. In a way, they never end. For now Purgidross is behind me, and space has been made for new things. I smile at that.

Come reap.