Books and Mortality

The whole argument for collecting books has started to seem absurd to me—a premonition fueled by mortality. Man will not be accompanied by his prized ledgers of early imprints into the great void. I understand that we must imagine Sisyphus happy, but is he really though, happy? Never did I imagine myself pondering my mortality at the behest of once-organic, now-material binders—seemingly lifeless, arranged vertically in my orderly caricature of a dead tree. These volumes hold the wisdom of man that predates Genesis. They bear the collective consciousness of that “lofty cast of mind” that will live when I ought not to. Perhaps it is a misfortune of the highest degree, for man must cease to be without first having an audience with his maker.