Shelf 128 is a repository of folkworks from folks:
- whose notion of spirituality is to explore normative questions about what we value, who we are, and what we should do, or
- who are not fast and clever twitwits spontaneously tweeting away, or
- who begin an email with an honest intention of writing a few lines to one correspondent,
yet clatter out screenfuls of unpolished goings on and on,
and then realize that several others could also serve as victim-recipients of their ramblings, or - who are victims of schooldays Latin translating speeches of Cicero,
leading to writing styles burdened with nuanced interminable chains of subjunctive clauses, or - who write as disjointed verbal collage, or
- whose minds circle roundabouts, finding all exits equally attractive, and end up taking their passengers down all possible roads, or
- who shamelessly quote Pascal or whoever before him coined “sorry, no time to edit for brevity”, or
- who are afflicted with epilepsiless temporal lobe epilepsy, or
- who suffer from bouts of leaky subclinical graphomania, or
- who are empty nesters with unlimited time to embed ellipses and intra-nest tangents of ever-diminishing interest, or
- who are putting off some onerous task, such as liberating garages, closets, backrooms, storage volumes,
where hoards of paper and digital invaders have colonized, or - who manifest some or all of these flawed design specs, self-grooming, in a seeming addictive manner, yet not suffering,
unaware of and unmoved by the inattention, pain or silence
of any readers who stumbled in and zoomed out.
Quotes
- “… library cataloging systems are a much-underrated contribution to our civilization.”
- “… it’s a fool’s errand to try to change people’s minds with 400- or 500-page volumes.”