Video Meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor

The Sower Who Read   ...a cautionary tale

He was a farmer who tilled soil by day but at night tilled a different sort of soil, a soil rich with the scent of paper and ink and dense with the thoughts of the long dead. Every night he would retire to the lamplit bookroom, the century old lighting an affectation that had caused three fires and no fatalities (unless one counted books, and he certainly did).

The room was quite ordinary. Twelve by seventeen, a bit narrow feeling, and after wiping the dust away he wallpapered it with dead presidents both literally and figuratively. He hung portraits of Washington & Monroe & purchased four of what would be many bookcases. He carefully applied two coats of rosewood finish to the cases, proudly noting each swirl against the grain as if he were Michelangelo admiring his Giuliano de' Medici.

The room narrowed, exponentially it seemed, as he fed it new books. The gyre was not widening yet the center could not hold; everywhere he looked there were books, books, more books! They enveloped him as if in a womb or cocoon and it was as if they had come to life and had begun spinning a web slowly around him, ‘round and ‘round, and if his limbs were no longer free to move about, what was that to him? "Come, my pretties, come!" he said. And they gathered in waves, torrents now, and his books had books until the dead presidents were obscured and he could no longer leave the room, could no longer move, and so the farm began to waste but the books gleamed, gleamed in supernova fashion, gleamed with an exponential shine. And one fine April morning it happened: his books had tilled him.