The Book Nook

4

   "You know what I truly want?" I can remember her saying that night on the balcony, the tiny fire between us. "More than the egotistical satisfaction of seeing something with my name on it, I want to look at said thing and know that I created it, forced it out into existence from the darkest dwellings of my muddled mind and proved, not to anyone else, but to myself  that I could indeed produce something of significance. Something that meant something."

We had sat around Alexandria's dwindling fire until it was shortly nothing but faint embers. We talked about trivial things like the bookstore and what life working there was like. I can remember the story she told me when I asked her what had inspired her to start writing those four-hundred or so pages that sat beside me.

"For the longest time, I knew I needed to write. Like a musician needs to play their instrument every day. Like someone who loves cars needs to forever be in their garage tinkering, fixing and rebuilding. But I could never stick with it. I was always starting and stopping, starting and stopping. Forever second-guessing myself and not overcoming it no matter how hard I tried.

I went through a period of taking walks in cemeteries. I usually went to the one on the edge of town, the one that went on for miles. It is far and away the most beautiful. I hardly passed anyone at all, nothing but rows of carved stone with names and dates and flowers. I found it serene.

One time I passed a man sitting on a park bench along the sidewalk in the endless maze of paths and grave markers. The man sat, motionless and straight-backed, like his mother had told him to sit up. He was staring off into the distance above the buildings as if there was something in the sky like a jet plane coming down, but I looked in that direction and saw nothing but clouds.

He noticed me just as I was walking past and his gaze came back to Earth, his mouth faltering. He looked at me, this strange girl wandering through the cemetery. I probably looked like a ghost, someone from a decade long past, with my vintage-style dress and my hair held up with a bow.

He raised a hand and waved at me.

'What draws you here?' he asked me. It was like he knew I came here often.

His name was Cedric Kim and he was in his seventies. His ritual was strolling through the cemetery during the warm months, stopping to read a book and saunter around the graves.

He showed me photos of himself and his wife from when they were younger. He carries them around because he doesn't want himself or anyone to forget how beautiful she was. How young and vibrant they once were. He also carried around written quotes in a notepad that she had said to him throughout the years, because she was more than just beautiful but incredibly intelligent and thoughtful. If he were able to document their entire life, he would have.

I had told him that I was out waiting for inspiration to hit me. I was stuck, spinning my wheels in place and watching my self-confidence slowly leaving.

He found it interesting that I wanted to be a writer. He too had an urge to put words down on paper, to tell a story to anyone willing to listen. I was astonished to find out he had also written a book. I made a mental note to search for it at the library or on the internet.

'How did you do it, Mister Kim?' was the first question I gave him.

'It's not a matter of how I did it,' he said softly, 'I just told myself that I was going to do it and so I proceeded to do it. Nothing got in my way. I had a vision in sight and I never let go of it.'

'And the story? How did it come about?' I thought I was asking too many questions.

'The book was just me trying to make sense of it all. Everyone has one great story in them - the story of their life. I only did it in the realest most sincere way I knew how at the time.'