Cold SnapDragon

There’s something about the blank page, and the written word on it. Develop a fetish for notebooks simply because you think of them as waiting to be filled with hopes, and dreams, and tales. Or simply to be filled with insipid grocery lists and accounts: the minutiae of everyday life which, added up, often really are the sum total of our lives. It doesn’t always matter what language the text is in: it’s sometimes the beauty of the script alone that leaves you marvelling. Of text you can decipher, read relentlessly. Fail to remember what it is that you’ve read. Pick up a book firmly believing that you’ve never laid eyes on it before only to have a stray turn of phrase, so innocuous that it seemingly doesn’t bear remembrance, remind you that the book isn’t new to you after all. Go back to books you know you’ve read but can barely remember; find in them stories you hadn’t noticed earlier. Realise that if a book is any good at all, it bears re-reading. Only once you’ve traced the words and