Once sharp, now soft

Friday Fragment #9

A gentle abrasion shows itself across every part of the postcard that sits between the eighty-eighth and eighty-ninth pages of the book I’m currently reading. This card has been my bookmark for more than a decade, travelling across tens of thousands of pages, a flag to separate something read from that which remains unread close by, verso and recto – an indicator of progress. The postcard is a reproduction of Gerhard Richter’s ‘Lesende’ or ‘Reader’. Apt, you could say, but not intentionally so. It’s been one of my favourite paintings from the moment I first saw its reproduction and then the painting itself on a gallery wall half a lifetime ago. This six-by-four rectangle of card has become incredibly precious to me. My friend,

Fiona Beckett

, writing a little less than a month ago, asked as to whether one should ever lend or borrow books. I replied that one should always do their best to hold onto them. And yet it would hurt me far worse to lose this postcard than to be without almost any of the individual books on my shelves. One of the things I’ve been writing about away from here is the vital familiarity of the objects we choose to surround ourselves with. We derive such comfort from such strange things and in such arcane ways. We place these things into the spaces we inhabit, into corners and nooks and shelves, and onto tables where they can be seen often, touched and held occasionally. We retain a rail ticket. We can’t throw away a handwritten note. We unite them with a paperclip which will forever be the blue paperclip that indelibly connects one memory or one life with another. We slip a card between the leaves of a book. These objects and these acts gratify and console us in so many ways. They allow us to belong; they are a root to a ground more stable; a reminder of the people and places that we love; a repository for that love that we call grief. The tactile qualities of this card are numerous. Once-sharp corners are now soft, its edges are burred – the pulped wooden fibres have separated slowly and broken off over time. Its once-glossy photo side is now several thousand sebum traces less pristine. Each time I finish reading, I push the postcard inside the book towards the gutter, to where the glued edges of the leaves sit, and set it half an inch proud of the top of the book block. I give Richter and his Reader one last loving glance before closing the cover for another day.

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