Long Forgotten Messages...

I got this idea from a fellow blogger... AKH

What comes to your mind about messages or names, written inside books or lost notes within records and on their sleeves?.

Messages of hope, congratulations, friendship, the future, pride, but most of all love, scribed in books everywhere, all to strangers who's possessions are now someone else's....

I do wonder whether they were thrown out in the heat of the moment or ended up mistakenly in the charity shop, junk sale or car boot or their owners time on this earth has reached it's natural end...

Now I enjoy finding these lost messages and after learning last night, books do have a shelf life, because the pages are breaking down into acid and will one day turn to dust, so the older the message the better.

But along with these forgot messages, creating their own story within the pages of the book, there be further stories... hidden in the seams.. crib notes and forgotten bookmarks, each personal to the previous owner.

What ever was to hand, used to mark a page.. old tickets, receipts, photos anything that could act as a reminder...

Admitedly that I'm pretty materialistic about things... but in a good way... I see it's value, it's production and it's worth... I treasure it in a way, be it small, be it seemingly worthless to most.

And I do see books as a thing of power and learning, with what they contain and when you see them in numbers...

I treasure old books the most, the effort that went into some of the illustrations, the typesetting which would have been done by hand... everything about them skilled and honed to produce tomes of quality and worth, lasting more than a lifetime...

But each book can contain memories as well.. places they where bought, been and company.

(There was a thing a while back where people left books in the back of Taxi's to venture off with a new owner, until they left it in another Taxi)..

I've a book full of memories.. I've have been reading for a while... a while as in a good 8 years.. (after all it is the Odyssey by Homer), I can recall where I got it, Longridge near Preston and hidden inside it is a receipt from where I use to read it.. a deli in Chorlton, every morning I'd go in, to savour the atmosphere and the company... and more specifically the name Lizzy on the receipt, is another reminder of a old attraction....

So what will happen next to all my books?.. some with messages inside to me... will they pass on to my family and stay with them or will they pass on once more to strangers... and will they care for them in the same manner...

by giving a old tome a new home?