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Love Notes In The Margin

They're innocent enough on the outside, but you should never judge books by their covers*. I've come across these volumes adrift in the swirling cosmos of junk shops, or in a secondhand book store gathering dust, sandwiched between academic texts and gravy-stained, chocolate cake-splattered copies of Margaret Fulton's Kitchen. I never sought them out, they tended to find me, but these are the places where they've been uncovered, rediscovered, these books with their dedications.

Most of us have written some heartfelt plea, some vapid thought or veiled feeling on the flypaper of a book. We've left our names, dates and intentions. Be it a birthday, anniversary, a parting gift, a lover's pledge, we've placed the fate of our scrawl in the hands of others. Others who might not be as dedicated to the dedications. And then we're stuck.

For years I've picked up these books and found those little notes alluring, realising the other day that I'm amassing a small collection of other people's memories. I have a concerned parent's hopeful message to a fitful son, in the Presbyterian Gentlemen's handbook of 1932. Two books of fairy tales from the grandparents of our parents who longed to invite their radical, wayward descendants into the rich world of their youth. There's the flowery scrawl of an elderly hand on an autograph book, filled with the signatures of people that exist only between its covers. Or the sensitive sepia ink drawing of the branch of a blossom tree inscribed, "with love, G.B. 1.3.14". Or the Marquis de Sade's Justine with its touching dedication from someone who has obviously not read the book and I suspect might have glimpsed the title and though, "That would be great gift fro my friend with the same name" (imagine Justine's surprise when she discovers the fate that befalls her in its all too soiled pages). There's a desperate plea scratched into the title page of the 1967 edition of Yoga and Sex - "To Ron, please read this with an open mind, Ethel", a family bible, from someone else's family (their family tree intact but uprooted and sitting on my bookshelf); and a Masonic bible, dedicated thus: "to the glory of the Great Architect of the Universe and presented to our worthy brother - Neil Grant Taylor#. Initiated, passed and raised by the Worship Master, the Senior Warden and Junior Warden." What became of Neil? Did he fail at the "three degrees", or did he sit beneath the big letter "G" in the Master's Cahair at the Highlands Lodge No. 843? Did he fall foul of the Masons, slicing open his nipple in some pagan ceremony, or did he discover the Bhagwan, free love and travel to the ashram in India where everyone is allowed to wear an apron?

The trouble with, and beauty of, these dedications is they pose only questions. They remain mysterious. They keep their secrets. It causes me to ponder the fate of the dedications I've written. Will I ever open a book and be confronted by the past? Will any of my musings fall into evil hands? Will unscrupulous folk bring them out at dinner parties when they need a good laugh? Once you've written those feelings down, you can never predict who'll read them.

I remember the day and the book that set me on this vicarious course. A delicate, pocket-sized edition of Shakespeare's love sonnets, bound in leather with gold embossed lettering and a garland of flowers surrounding the title, loitering in a bin at St. Vinnie's, protected by soft toys, innocuous and easily overlooked. Of all my purloined memories it has the most grandiose, but ultimately saddest, dedication:

"To my love, Sarah, our lives now entwined, our spirits merged in this, the culmination of our joy, this act of love. You are my one and only darling, the meaning of my being. I look forward to eternity with you. Love always, Ralph." It was dated May 1985. I bought it for 50c in January 1986.

Why was eternity so short? What fate befell the lovers? Are they still "entwined"? Or did Sarah just loathe Shakepeare's simpering prose, preferring, as a covenant of love, the street-savvy, working-class stylings of, say, Ian Dury's first album?

I've no answers. I just possess someone else's book of sonnets, a document of a love that was unaware of its use-by date. Everything in life is fleeting, but here was something pressed into the page that lived on. A dedication that outlived the feeling and is the only survivor of that distant, lost exchange of words and gifts. What happened?

* Although more often employed in questions relating to character, this cliche's application is still particularly relevant to books.

# Some of the names have been change to protect the guilty.

Not Lost, Just Gone Before

Not dead, just sleeping. That's what they said. I was in my late teens and it was pretty obvious he was dead. When people sleep they don't tend to do it in an open casket. They don't tend to do it surrounded by grieving loved ones, decked out in black, beating their breasts and chanting the top ten on the Hot 100 Religious Anthems. It's a small room and the stench from the incense alone it enough to wake the dead. It doesn't.

Five months ago I lost my watch. I lost track of time. Apart from the time when I lost my watch. The absence of my watch caused me to embark on a strange odyssey. I ended up filling those five months remembering all the other things I'd lost. Sadly, I found I could only truly remember the important ones. All the rest were gone, lost twice, in effect. It made me realise there are as many "things" to lose in this life as there are "things" - maybe even more. How will we ever know? Loss of life, loss of loved ones, loss of mind, loss of hair... and they're just a miniscule sampling of the big ones. Then there's the repetitive, annoying daily loss of keys or the remote, or for some of us, face. And, as I recently learnt, some people can be lost and yet be sitting right next to you. Sometimes you can lose things through no fault of your own.

Years ago, in Melbourne, my home was burgled. I checked the rooms and filled out the obligatory police forms but it took me months to account for all the bits and pieces that had been stolen. Many times I only found that items were gone when I went looking for what wasn't there and couldn't find it. Recent reports suggest burglars, and other house-breaking criminals, are becoming more discerning, focusing on high-quality, name brands with good sell-on potential. Which can only be a bonus for the industry. Though I'm loath to offer villains any advice, I'd suggest they go directly to the stereo, do not collect the sentimental commodities on the way and do not stop at the PlayStation.

Out of all the high-tech gadgets, electrical equipment and lovely litter that was pinched that night, only one article still makes my heart lurch: my grandfather's wedding cufflinks and shirt studs, handmade by his future wife when they couldn't afford the store-bought variety. They were carefully hewn from mother-of-pearl and threaded together with love, never to be replaced.

(I'm scribbling this close to deadline, two in the morning, tired and grumpy, when at this very moment in the saga my doorbell, which has been gravely silent for five months, suddenly rings. I open the door: no-one. This is naturally followed by a feeling of "loss").

You may not have been fortunate enough to lose everything, but you may have been fortunate enough to meet people who have lost everything. They tell you it's "character building". Although the only reason they're telling you they've lost everything is usually because they have it all again. People who've really lost everything normally aren't around to gloat about it, blithely sipping overpriced cocktails with ludicrous names in bars with crushed velvet walls. They might have even lost their voice. Then there are those who claim to have lost everything, but in reality they've lost only a couple of things, their investments in bauxite mines in developing countries being part of the portfolio they manage to retain during their dire predicament.

Today I was aware that during the course of my life I hadn't lost that much because, after five months, I found my watch. It'd fallen down the back of the couch*. It was lost but it had come back to me - the prodigal watch. If only everything we thought last was merely "down the back of the couch" - family, friends, hope, heart, nerve, voice, cufflinks, shirt studs and hair all happily waiting, in that warm pit of lint and coins, to be rediscovered. Not lost, just misplaced.

* Loss of fact: The watch was actually stuck behind a set of drawers beside the bed. I chose to simplify this using using the familiar "d.t.b.o.t.c" paradigm.

Loss of mind: The alarm on the watch was set for 7am. Every day when I woke at this hour, I believed it was because my body clock was cranking with some intuitive, newly developed Swiss precision.

Afterthought: It must be mentioned that there are many, many things that it's beneficial to lose. Weight seems to be a very popular one, if late-night TV is anything to go on. Occasionally losing one's temper is a terrible thing, while losing it forever would be a joy. A word of caution: never attempt to permanently lose your lap; it just means a great deal of standing around, and you may never get that dance you've always wanted.