Tick Tock

Today I came across a book I read when I was in college. I was rummaging through an old wooden box in a shed and happened upon it. I opened it to find the pages had acquired the sepia tinge of old books. Like books I would take off the shelf and thumb through in my grandparents’ house as a child. Only this is my book. I remember where I bought it, I remember reading it and today I found it and its pages are brown. Nothing that has happened to me up to this point has wielded such power in describing the tranche of time that has already passed. Not children getting taller and cheekier, not the discovery of rusted discarded toys or grey hairs. Crisp white pages have turned brown. How do the insides of my lungs look, my pulmonary artery or vena cava? How old am I? Nineteen eighty four is twenty six years ago. Treasured books have taken on the look of Jane Austens or Robert Louis Stevensons perused on dusty old folks’ shelves on murky school summer holidays. Where will it end?