“Not another book,” I chant, hands clasped, praying to a printer. Communication Design predicates perfecting the book. Font and type, pairing, kerning, copyediting, editing, layering, and that which goes before, after, or tucked between margins. Lines and line-heights of texts. Absent of rivers, guided by precision: this not that. Bookbinding is fickle, but so am I. I repeat myself, threading a needle, over and over, until I am desperate, tired, over the redundancy, the demand, the gnawing sense that I was, I am, to make a book.
Can a book exist without being a book?
Despite the persistent making of books and books demanding to get made, I love books: indents, metaphors, foil stamping, spines, paperbacks and hardcovers, and centuries-old stories that capture faraway lives. I love books and became a writer: I love to write. I love books and became a designer: I love design. Each is meant for someone, someone as in someone whose desires I need to anticipate. Needs, likely, but desires surely. And what of my own? Chapter by chapter, I have focused on articulating my thoughts, mapping the impossibility of knowing another as much as yourself, the likelihood of joy, on mistakes and musings imparted in young heart-sprung confessions.
I am young, I know, I read about it. Have I lived enough? The book is in progress, pages upon pages of self. Myself, splayed open. A time capsule of a book not made. Yet.