The Bookbinder

7:15 AM

On the cold morning of November 14th, I found that my brother Frank had become a foxed, leather-bound, and mysteriously dusty hardcover of The Monadology by Gottfried Leibniz. Mondays, right?

It made sense, I reasoned. We had fiercely clashed the previous night along metaphysical fault lines. I tried and failed to explain my metamodern philosophy, which was partially inspired by the late German philosopher, along with the scientific advancements of the last few centuries. To Frank, this kind of “universal system” was anathema. And it drove me crazy when, as in our last dialogue, my brother’s stance against universal absolutes became his absolute. My starting point of an absolute Good and the reality of meaning was his nonstarter. He was armed and ready to reject these kinds of things with his usual cohort of claims—including of course that “value, meaning, and truth are subjective.” Frank was always such an unbearable postmodern killjoy. But I never wished him any misfortune. I suppose if one must become a book, this is a damn good one. Lucky Frank.

Books are, of course, written by people—but maybe they have an even more human origin than I knew. My personal library contains hundreds of books. Could some be former people? I found myself thinking that there were a number of people I knew who would be better off as books.

Frank, for one, now seems to be living in one of the most profound books ever written. His essence is invisibly printed underneath the words he never understood; in his own way, he enlarges the empty spaces between the lines of Leibniz’s terse ontological opus—like the remnants of acid-washed words in a palimpsest. And, incidentally, old books like this one have an intoxicating aroma, as any avid reader knows. It was a big improvement over Frank’s notably sulfurous body odor.

I had no time to further ponder the exact mechanism by which this transformation had occurred. It is devastatingly typical for me to get absorbed in reading (what a strange turn of phrase that now is), and I will once again be late for work. I’ll blame Frank.

9:03 AM

I teach philosophy at the local university. It’s the kind of school you would have never heard about, but I don’t think that makes it any less important.

I reached my office and settled in at my desk. I waited for my computer to start up, using the time to text Lindsey, the woman I’ve been dating. We have plans to get together for dinner later. I was eager to tell her about this morning’s incident, since I had begun to question just how common this kind of bibliomorphic transformation is. Maybe she knows. She may not always understand me, but she does always believe me. Her receptivity to me is unique among the people I’ve met, and the way she sees the real me feels even more important than having her understand every philosophical idea I share. Lindsey’s authentic openness and deep well of empathy made her my antidote to all the Franks of the world.

What will she make of this? She has quite a book collection, herself. Is there a homo verbum on her shelves as well? I think she’s going to return some books to me. I loaned her my favorite poets, since poetry is a glaring omission in her library.

10:44 AM

I concluded my morning class on moral realism and dismissed my students. I had demonstrated how Platonic Ideas are simultaneously absolute and relative, which erases the so-called Two-Worlds fallacy that is so often used to bludgeon Plato. I further connected this to a scientific grounding in physics and thermodynamics, and showed with unimpeachable precision that Planck’s constant is the smallest unit that can contain an imperfect representation of the Good. For some reason, my students seemed eager to leave.

Despite feeling like my words had largely been lost on them, there was an exception. My brightest student, Helen, stayed in her seat as the others hurried out. She stared ahead in my direction, but not at me exactly. I matched her and allowed her to decide when to break the silence.

When she was ready to speak, she took a rebellious and authoritative tone. She rattled off a list of names including Nietzsche, Hume, and Popper. She said they showed that Plato’s view of the world was as flawed as Christianity, and that if God was dead, then so was the Good. She said that Plato was an advocate of tyranny, and that there is no basis for deriving a morally real “ought” from what “is”. Her every syllable incrementally darkened the room until it resembled a shadowy cave. I wasn’t used to this kind of intensity from her.

How does nihilism still manage to enrapture so many people? I didn’t know quite what to say, so I turned toward the classroom’s chalkboard—which was now far more difficult to read in this untimely morning darkness. The board was full of my excited notes from the preceding lecture. I hoped they might spark some new inspiration that would change Helen’s mind.

Nothing came to me, however, so I turned again to face my philosophical opposite. In her seat, a freshly-printed edition of Thus Spoke Zarathustra returned my gaze. So it wasn’t just Frank—something has changed. Is it me? Two book transformations in one day could be a coincidence, I thought. But I didn’t believe my own reassurance. Small thorny vines of guilt and fear began to grip me at the base of my throat.

Plato believed in the power of dialogue to drive philosophical discoveries. Have I lost my way in the labyrinth of this ancient art? What will become of wisdom if everyone with whom I seek it is entombed in static tomes?

2:04 PM

I left campus to visit my favorite lunch spot. There is no menu—only a daily special which is invariably better than what was served the previous day. My interaction with Helen had set off a snowball of anxiety that was quickly becoming an avalanche. But I was determined to nourish myself. I needed to keep my energy up in order to investigate why people become books—and if there was any convenient and affordable way to reverse this cosmic hex.

I approached the restaurant, which was a brutal obsidian cube with no formal entryway. The singular, small square window cut into the center of its front face (if you could call one side the front) was the only point of access—the place where you put your cash in exchange for food. All I know is that this is the best place in the city to get an inexplicable meal that’s downright interplanetary.

In a thoughtless moment of small-talk, I mentioned to the employee on window-duty that I was having a rough day. Except what I actually said was that I felt like I was at the center of a Shakespearian-level of torment that was specially crafted to drive me insane. I further speculated, by way of a short monologue on the literary alchemy in Shakespeare’s later plays, that I might be living out an archetypal pattern which starts with a death-like dissolution and ends with a magnificent, transformative rebirth into more complete selfhood.

The young man seemed to take my comments to heart, because his face froze unnaturally, as if he had stopped speaking midsentence. A jumbled, language-adjacent cacophony came out of his mouth, like an oration given underwater. Upon, apparently, making his point, he promptly turned into King Lear. Shakespeare built many tragic worlds—would that be the outcome for this innocent person who unluckily heard my words?

Lear—he was the king who asked, “Who is it that can tell me who I am?” I said the quote out loud to this new King Lear, and whoever else might be enclosed in the cube. None of them answered.

5:28 PM

It’s strange that I still hadn’t heard back from Lindsey. Usually I’m the one who forgets to text back. I began my drive home, and upon reaching the block where she lives, I noticed her landlord putting an eviction notice on the door. Now, feeling more concerned, rather than rejected for not hearing back from her, I decided to stop and see what was going on. In a perfunctory tone, he explained that Lindsey had turned into a book, which was against the terms of the lease. He said that because of some bad experiences he had in the past, it was now his policy to only rent to sentient beings. And with that, he extended his arm and handed Lindsey to me.

Now my dear girl was a delicate softcover copy of Rilke’s Book of Hours. Purple sticky notes poked out from the top like an overgrown garden. I opened to one of these pages and then another. Each purple flag was pointing to one of Lindsey’s favorite lines from Rilke’s divinely inspired poems.

A great poem can speak for us better than we can speak for ourselves sometimes. Lindsey knew that. Now when I want to speak to her, she can call up the immortal words in which she lives. I’ll never read the whole book again. I desire only the lines highlighted by Lindsey, as if she has written her own poem from fragments of Rilke. I think she would have liked being metapoetic.

And yet, I finished my walk home with a heavy heart. I found myself thinking that I could have prevented this fate for Lindsey if I had only loved her better. Maybe that’s how Rilke felt writing his love poems to God—ineptly grasping at a universal perfection of which we see only the tiniest fractions and palest shadows. Or maybe this is how God feels, playing with creatures who can’t even understand the rules of His game. Which of them felt more alone?

Earlier today, I felt that a change like this could be a positive development for someone like my brother. But, holding Lindsey in my hands, running my fingers over the lifeless pages, I realized this was nothing like the high-voltage, heart-accelerating surge I felt between our naked bodies.

7:50 PM

Have you ever eaten an exquisite meal in an abominable mood? I had already planned this dinner and purchased the ingredients, in anticipation of sharing it with Lindsey. I’m quite a good cook. My mournful state of mind, however, made my food take on the consistency, flavor, and appearance of a rain-soaked newspaper.

What does it matter? Great food, like great words, should be shared with people who will be most genuinely appreciative. And I’m running out of people.

11:43 PM

The clock on my wall hurried toward tomorrow. Numbly, I began placing my new books in their proper places on my shelves. I looked over the many rows, and I had the sense of seeing through time, into places far away and deep within long-gone minds. These pages used to feel alive with latent consciousness.

If we are to believe the words of Leibniz, the universe is an entirely full space—a plenum. And it’s full of relationships. I think it’s beautiful that everything is entangled. I have always tried to honor this interrelatedness of all things. And my life has seemed most meaningful when experienced with a sense of nonduality with reality. But my effect on people today is diametrically opposed to this—like my outward yearnings have boomeranged back, weaponized against me.

I held the Frank Edition of The Monadology, and felt like I had been wrong this morning. He did not understand me, nor Leibniz, and now he never will. I felt ashamed for violently writing over his words with the ones in this book—rather than finding harmony and coherence between the two.

When I felt least understood by those alive and close to me today, these books were friends and philosophical sparring partners. But now a somber, funereal depression seemed to color them. I had become the crypt keeper among monuments of misunderstanding. My favorite books are now like the grotesque undead; they are my loved ones taunting me from a place beyond.

One more thing before bed—I almost forgot. I opened my computer and located the video recording I had made from my lecture this morning. I always upload them to my YouTube channel. Maybe someone will find me there and care about what I say. It will take a few more minutes before the video goes online.

11:59 PM

My words landed in the nebulous fabric of the internet and rippled like a stone dropped in water. I knew I was that stone, stubbornly sinking to the depths of some milieu from which I will always be separate. A profound and unyieldingly final silence blanketed the world, and it was the unmistakable sound of my total lack of integration with other souls.

Why did I upload that video? What have I done? I must have a sinister touch much darker than that of Midas.

My clock took its penultimate step toward midnight, and a burning sensation radiated out from the center of my bones. I recognized the feeling, like a bad dream that recalls an actual cataclysm. I knew what my place in all this was. I am the last man on Earth. I am perfectly depersonalized.

Now, every book that will ever exist has already been written, and their words buzz like incessantly meaningless noise around my ears. They mercilessly remind me that tomorrow I will wake up in a chasm of unbridgeable detachment, and that the capacity to understand has died today. When it’s my turn, please bury me in the library among those I loved.