As I am reunited with a long-lost volume, holding it in the
palm of my hands, I feel an electrifying sensation run through
me, —a surge of warmth and heat. These old books that have
been lying at the bottom of my chest are colored by subtle hues
of memory, mixed in with the sweet scent of time, as if they are
finally returning to my side after a long journey. When I set out
for Seattle thirty years ago, these books were tucked into my
suitcase, accompanying me as I crossed vast oceans, not knowing
this was to be the beginning of a long sojourn in a foreign
land. As I left this island nation, these pocket-sized books, too,
were given a taste of exile, left exposed to the surreal snowscapes
of the north, and the sunny shores of California. From
cover to wrinkly yellowed cover, the pages of each volume have
witnessed the wonders of the world. On distant shores, they
would spend their youth with their young master, and along with him ripen into old age.
Thirty years on, these books would return to their native
Taiwan, bringing with them not only literary imagination
ingrained in print, but also the trials and tribulations, and the
weighty memories of their erstwhile owner. That is to say, they
are more than just a novel or a book of poetry, but are receptacles
of the owner’s sentiments, and years of tributes to the passing
of time. They carry with them scars as deep as the manifold
travails of their master. The years that they have lived have
become an inseparable part of the owner’s existence, the fates of
book and owner now intimately intertwined. Book in hand, I
catch the subtle play of light and shadows between the lines: I
sense raindrops, snowflakes, falling leaves, and passing clouds
on an autumn day.
Returning these books to their rightful places on the bookshelf,
I feel as if my unruly emotions too have settled. As I read
in the night, I cannot help but relive the past: retracing my journeys,
the howling of the wind and sound of falling snow become
all the more vivid. After years on the road braving the wind and
the rain, I finally have the luxury of curling up in a reading
nook, savoring the tranquility of the moment as life returns to
simplicity—a simplicity almost too good to be true. Sitting
under a lamp, I return to these volumes that were once familiar
to me, and feel as if a long-lost passion has been rekindled.
After all these years, after half a lifetime traveling halfway
around the globe, I am reunited with these books of yesteryear.
Those familiar words and those notes left in the margin of each
page together conspire to transport me to another time and
another place, bringing back an acute sense of loneliness I experienced
years ago reading through the night.
As my eyes move along with the text, feeling my way from paragraph to paragraph, it is as if I’m walking through the familiar
streets of childhood, fully cognizant of the rhythm of each
poetic line and the plot of each fictional tale. I’m in home territory,
fully conscious of every new move and each possible
development. But even with such omniscience, there is a certain
novelty to the reading experience, one that eludes words. As I
work through each book, the emotions that surface, somehow,
bear little resemblance to what I experienced before.
The imagery that I got out of books early in my youth was
fragmented and limited in dimension. As I possessed an unimpressive
repertoire, and had yet to gain life experience, my pleasure
of reading was largely textual, wholly reliant upon the
enchantment of words and the mystery of the unfamiliar. I was a
hopeless romantic back then, ever so easily moved by raindrops
falling and willows fluttering in the wind, ever immersing
myself in the otherworldly dreamscapes depicted by the written
word. Be it classical poetry or modern fiction, my concerns
were purely aesthetic, for given my limited knowledge, that was
as far as I could go. Even within the realm of aesthetics, my
powers of appreciation were mediocre, for in my green youth I
had only so much knowledge of the world.
Knowledge is accumulated not only through books, but also
through experiencing and living life. As I spiraled down the
paths I traveled, I sensed not only changes in physical scenery,
but also the glories and foibles of human nature. Every incident
of heartbreak, betrayal and despair was in fact adding to the varied
texture of life. And it is through these experiences of suffering
and cruelty that texts incomprehensible to me in youth suddenly
took on meaning as I matured in years. That obscure
poem that I had spent many a youthful night toiling over, and
that remained impenetrable through repeated readings despite my determination to get to the bottom of it—as I pick up again
on this cold winter night, now well into middle age, the most
cryptic line suddenly speaks with utmost clarity. The ineffable
joy that comes of this sudden enlightenment is akin to that of a
miraculous recovery from a long debilitating illness—it is a godsend,
for which I can only be grateful.
Herein lies the mystery of reading. Having read an old volume
is no guarantee that the reader has understood it.
Understanding—whether it is a line of verse or a tome of knowledge—
requires the infusion of life experience. Like water wearing
away bedrock, or the ripening of fruit, time plays a key role,
patiently waiting in the wings; from initial reading to rereading,
from incomprehension to comprehension, time and age wait
their turn to contribute. When the moment is right, a locked
door flies open, offering a new window on the world.
Not all books are worth returning to, but there are some that
are definitely worth the effort. There are no hard and fast rules
for the accumulation of knowledge,....
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