In Search of a Bookmark

 

I read about the characters, I follow their adventures and become a little invested in their lives.  But then someone says, “It’s time for lunch.”  Or “Come on- we need to go.”  And I suddenly find myself scrambling for a bookmark.  Mentally I know where I left off, but just closing the book forces me later into a search for the proper page, the last sentence read, or something that clicks.  Something showing me one of my own footprints.  I was here.  This is where I was standing when the maid dropped the platter and startled the dog awake, who jumped up and bit the arm of the couch.

By now you’ve figured out I have more than one book going at a time, otherwise, a single bookmark would suffice.  So maybe it isn’t that I require multiple bookmarks, but that I need to restrict my reading to a single book at a time. 

On the surface that comes off as a simple fix.  The problem comes in when I hear a clever title or catch a glimpse of an intriguing book jacket.  My curiosity kicks in and the next thing you know there are several open books in varying stages of completion lying about. 

Yes, on a scale from one to ten this doesn’t even register.  It is not a big issue or major problem, I only mention it because at the moment there are four books piled here on the desk, leaving little room for this keyboard.  Two of them deal with Henry David Thoreau, and one covers issues with Emerson, Thoreau and William James.  The last book is a novel by James Magnuson called Windfall.  It is a good story and well written.  That one presently has the bookmark.

This is the image on my bookmark.  It is me keeping a bow and arrow target dry when it started to rain.   I don’t know who built it, we only discovered it here in the woods.   It is such a helpless-looking bear it seemed that someone should keep it dry.

 

                                                                                                          zc