It was with a heavy heart that the television shut dark, its few remaining options of intelligent entertainment laid to rest. The History, Discovery and Science channels – all once bastions of their own namesake – now wastelands of the greed and desperate want for approval; victim of their own willingness to whore out what little palpable meat remaining on the bones of their once hearty and voluptuous flesh. I could no longer stomach the carrion of the shell I once adored, nauseous by its perpetual screen burn and animated enticements for the next eventual betrayal, endlessly featured in High Definition deceit.
With shame I turned to a dear lost friend and begged forgiveness in my despair and loneliness. Her pressed pulp and ink wrapped in a dust-covered binding, she opened warmly to me as if not a day had passed since our last encounter. She whispered greetings to me, a blessing of absolution. Then she lay, vulnerable and exposed, admitting her birth so long ago as evidenced by her curved spine and her softened corners. There she lay, as beautiful as the day we met.
“Take me, lose yourself in my lines again. Consume me, embrace me as I swallow and absorb you,” she enticed. Without hesitation I pursued.
She is weathered and gorgeous and left me no choice but to celebrate her as such. Her facts dated and somewhat disproven, she lay reclined, fiercely resilient and unapologetic, a testimony to her eloquent refusal to comply with the status quo. Yes, one could compare her to younger, fresher content dressed in flare, sparkles and wondrous noise; but, in that one would quickly be spent and left wanting, hungry after a disturbingly abrupt and bloodless meal. Meanwhile, there she purred softly in the corner, like a panther exhaling patiently, awaiting the lights to dim for the opportunity to strike with unparalleled force by the flicker of candle light. Now that she was uncaged, her will was mine.
“Judge me by the way I look,” she smiled knowingly while exposing her throat to me as a feast in waiting, confident that I would partake. My apologies of absence were clearly laid out before me and yet she invited, “Taste me.”
My resistance dissolved into the vaporous confessions of one already forgiven and I returned to the warm, comfortable embrace of a long lost mistress: a great book.