PART II. Something came over me then

Something came over me then. It was as though I had stumbled onto the charred remains of the Great Library. I began tearing at rocks, rip­ping off their covers for the prizes inside. I leaped from stone to stone, sized up the most promising tablets, pulled them apart — hurrying now, for the tide would rise soon and wash much of it under. Of course, I was only making matters worse, exposing the fragile specimens to the ele-

ments. So I hurried faster. It became imperative that I return the next day — and the next day, and the naxt, and retrieve everything I could.

And do what with it, exactly? My house filled, then overflowed. Window ledges grew thick with fossil clumps of ancient grasses; my office door sprouted several Carboniferous doorstops. I was produc­ing more paperweight than paper. And still the cliff continued its re­lentless output. Even as I sat before it, poring over its works, more would chatter down its face — more tossed —off volumes, more epics for me to process and preserve. The cliff's prolificacy was mad­dening. I considered investing in a helmet, lest an Encyclopedia Britan-nica of rock fall on my head.

But this was not production; it was expulsion. The land was shed­ding. It happens all the time, of course, all over the place, yet I had never stopped to see it. Even the most avid collector of books eventu­ally confronts the limits of physical space. There is no more room on the bookshelf, no room in the house for more shelves. Books must be purged, let go, set free. The Earth was sloughing off its memories, unburdening itself of recollected weight. It discarded effortlessly, with­out thought. I admired its efficiency, and felt small beside it.

It struck me then that I was not in any kind of great library at all but rather in a sort of reminders bin, the geological equivalent of a base­ment clearance sale at the local library. It was not the dustbin of history yet, only because I stood in it. I was a rummager, a bargain hunter, a gleaner, a bookworm. I was browsing for the right title, which I would know when I saw it. I was scanning the frayed paperbacks of a Broad­way street vendor, looking for the one to fuel me. Shelves are for books. Why empty them if not to fill anew?

I walked to the house, arms full. We are detrivores: soil mites, corn-posters, readers, writers. We digest. Sediment falls, a bed of leaves snows down; we turn it over or are buried trying.