These books are abandoned homes, once inhabited by memories. They are layered with mirages, text taken away from the original page, menageries left to howl at each other when the covers meet to close.
Adaptation is a negotiation between two options; a binary decision of nature, leaving us with very little say in the matter. Herbert Spencer called Charles Darwin's natural selection, survival of the fittest, perhaps prescribes too much meaning to a thing that has only recently acquired the ability to decide. Many people survive, without so desiring. We are struggling... between our realizations of the decisions we arbitrarily make, and being propelled forth by the ones we don't.
Getting Acquainted With Living Things is a system of order for my experience in these matters. The narrative is a tree, and any given interpretation is a branch.
In the book, each chapter starts with a stark page. The transitions may be neither mild, nor clear. For me, distinction is fading. And while we are more valuable through experience, we are no longer young, nor have as much time to experience. Youth is wasted on the young? It's not even trite. It's a semblance of a kind of local familiarity repeated over and over again, a little aligned, a little unspecific.
Order is human attribute to what's happening. And narrative and storytelling, which has always been mine, is slipping away.
