I grew up in a home with very little money and a slightly agoraphobic mother. Other than annual trips to visit my grandparents (St. Petersburg, (the drive from Tallahassee an endless stretch of flat Florida nothingness) and Portsmouth, Ohio, respectively), we did not travel. Ever.
I have only been in the states of Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio. I have flown in an airplane a total of three times. One of those trips was a one-way ticket back from my grandfather's funeral. I don't think that one should even count.
When I was sixteen, a church flew our entire family to Chicago for a weekend so that my parents could lead a marriage enrichment retreat. As a result of that trip, I can claim to have seen the interior of a Helmsley hotel. I have seen snow outside of windows, but that is all I have seen of the windy city.
It makes me sad that I have never travelled. I feel like I have missed something along the way.
Now, I live just minutes from Hartsfield International Airport. At my favorite thrift store, I buy books that have not been read. It's easy to tell when a book has been discarded without being read. It feels different in your hands. To be honest, I prefer to read books like this - perhaps because the act of reading is inherently intimate. A book in the process of being read is carried into the restroom, taken to bed, packed in a purse or bag, and read over coffee. It sits in the front seat of the car, it goes along for the ride. In all these places that the book is taken out, there are moments when the reader slips silently inside of it. The mattress, and the pillow, the cat curled at their feet, the spouse sleeping beside them - all these things fade away. Although the reader may be physically present, they are elsewhere. And so, books that have been read carry an imprint of the reader that came before.
I become attached to the books I have read. For awhile, I checked out books to read. I found that, afterwards, I usually felt compelled to purchase a copy - not because I wanted to re-read the book later, but because it felt wrong not to have it. I buy double copies of books I like, so that I don't have to give the copy I read away.
Oftentimes, I purchase unread books at the thrift store, read halfway through, and then, find tucked between the pages an airline boarding pass. It shocks me back into the present as I realize that my book was once a plane ride book. It has been in the sky. It has gone places. My book was purchased to pass the time in unfamiliar lobbies, or as insurance for the ride to come: an invisible barrier to prop between the reader and the unknown stranger that might end up in the seat next to them. Some books were probably purchased with the ulterior motive that the title would be literary, or trendy, or obscure enough to attract the conversation of just the right sort of person.
I attributed the last motive to Dana-whose-last-name-starts-with-a-"B", and whom I have never met. I only know that she used an electronic ticket to take Delta flight DL1287 from New York City to Atlanta and left the boarding pass in the unread, hardback copy of Jonathan Safran Foer's novel, Everything Is Illuminated, that I purchased at Value Village for a dollar and fifty cents. She sat in seat 29F, and flew coach. She had three bags.
I found Dana's pass two-thirds of the way through the novel, and I was jealous. Normally, when I find tickets in books, they are simply a novelty. They are most frequently in books with movie tie-in photographs on the cover. It makes perfect sense to me that someone would choose those sorts of books for a plane ride. I do not question their choices.
This time, I was slightly angry. I disliked Dana B immediately.
Why would she have purchased a hardcover copy of Everything is Illuminated and then, when she arrived in Atlanta, discarded it? I imagined her sitting in LaGuardia, and reading the first few pages of the book, and deciding that she did not like it -judging it too strange, or difficult to read. I decided that she lacked imagination and intelligence. I pulled out her ticket again and again, and wondered why she choose this book to take along for her flight. As I read, I kept wondering. At what moment did she quietly slip her ticket between the pages, and close the book, and decide to get rid of it? It had to have happened early, because even the dust jacket of the book felt new.
As I carried her book that is now mine around, my jealousy of Dana-who-was-in-New-York-City-long-enough-to-need-three-bags stayed with me. I've never been to New York, but I would guess that it would be a perfect backdrop for reading Foer's book. I'd love to have been the one with a chance read it as I was travelled through the sky, to pause after a passage and look out the window, seeing nothing but blue or stars.
As I neared the end, I lost the book for a day. I looked to see if I had accidentaly concealed it when I made the bed, or if it had fallen by the headboard. I checked in the kitchen, and on top of the china cabinet. I finally found it wedged between the window and my favorite chair.
When I finished the book, I took Dana's ticket out from between the pages one last time. I was still a little jealous of the places she has been. The beautiful black and white book that had been hers, and now belonged to me, sat in my lap. With something like satisfaction, I thought to myself: "Well, she has never been here".
