perspective

i bought this beautiful book as a gift for myself (and for one other special person) and it is even better than expected, amazing appositions of word and image, and would you believe it, on the very day it got here, i found it on the coffee table (which should really be renamed: it hasn't seen any coffee in years and has long been requisitioned as a drawing table by you-know-whom), defiled. thoroughly scratched through with blue ball-point pen (i.e. impossible to remove). she said she was just colouring it in. i threw a fit (obviously), all the while beating myself over the head for being so materialistic, and assigning such value to such unimportant things as books, while a wide-eyed child was needing my attention (this did not help the fit, or the child (obviously)). and even once the fit was over, and the wide eyes back to their still-rather-too-wide-for-comfort self, i could be heard muttering under my breath what sounded remarkably like "my pretty book, my pretty book is ruined, whaaaahhhhhh".

then a wise woman dropped by. said twenty years from now, it's the scratching on the cover that will bring tears of joy and regret to my eyes, it's the blue ball-point markings that will make it my very favourite, my very prettiest book. so i decided not to wait twenty years.