Public Secrets
I sometimes find myself alone, walking in a crowded place, just being silent. In these moments of quiet I take a step back, stifle my inner monologue and just let things flow around me. I wouldn’t necessarily call this just people-watching — although watching people ends up being a significant enough slice of this time spent — I still walk around, window shop and try to keep any perceived leering to a minimum. I liken it to pulling up the rudder on a boat and riding the current.
Ordinarily the things I end up seeing are pretty standard fare. There are tantrum throwing children (in the range of nonage to dotage) with their attending guardians attempting immediate appeasement of some kind — plenty of these in point of fact. There are the self-absorbed, searching for something which really frames their individuality adequately, found generally in a retail setting. The absentminded are a frequent sighting. Generally it’s all banal stuff. But sometimes, just sometimes mind you, I witness a moment surprising and beautiful.
Today I was browsing around Barnes & Noble in the Pacific Place mall, running in silent mode if you will. Bookstores are almost a sure thing for soaking up hours of my time, and I needed to kill some waiting for Bill to be done with an appointment. I should note that my library at home is at a point where I stack books vertically on the shelf in an effort to economize the limited space. My ‘to read’ pile is now 10 items deep and easily as many months old. I really should be laying off the bookstores.
I walked the rows. Biography, Investments, Military History, Current Events, Islam (a section which seems to be growing rapidly, particularly in the area of ‘critiques’), I wandered past them all. I stopped for a bit in the Culture section where I saw a series of books based on the website PostSecret. PostSecret is an open art project for anyone to share a secret publicly by mailing an anonymous (usually handmade) postcard to a post office box. The postcards are scanned into an image and posted to a website for the world to see.
From I have seen on the site I can tell they range from funny notions (’I put boogers in my husband’s soup when we fight’) to secrets of terrible weight (’I knew you were being molested but kept silent so that it would not happen to me’). Reading the secrets feels incredibly intimate. I think it’s brilliant, just enough to perhaps be divinely inspired in the secrets shared.
I popped open the book, skimming the secrets shared inside. While flipping over the pages I buzzed past a torn sheet of white paper stuff pushed into the binding. I figured it was an inventory control note or just some random scrap so I flipped back to remove it. This is something of an idiosyncrasy of mine. I like my books pristine before I take them home.
What I found inside was actually a handwritten note, scrawled with tight penmanship. The lettering was smallish as if the writer were trying to hide the note from someone else. Perhaps even from himself. (I’m guessing the author was male.) This is what the note said:
We’re sitting here next to each other writing our secrets to put in this book … I hope she comes back on her own, and looks for mine…
maybe then she’ll know I love her.
And that was the moment. I carefully put the note back into its former place and returned it to the shelf. I didn’t have the heart to buy it and break the circle. I hope she comes back on her own too.
One Response to “Public Secrets”
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Good man for leaving it there. Rarely does the stuff of fiction occur in reality. Best not to mess with it, when it does.