#4 I Go Back To The House For A Book

Hello!

I recently finished reading The Midnight Library (I loved the premise and the scientific-ish explanation for the premise, but found the story itself a little preachy and on the nose), and have been thinking a lot about our choices - both big and small - and how each of them lead us down a slightly different path.

It’s an interesting pastime to daydream about all the slightly different decisions I could have made and what those versions of me might be doing today (occasionally a fun way to spend time, usually deeply terrifying). Anyways, this poem felt like a beautiful representation of my wondering so I decided to share it today.

I Go Back To The House For A Book - Billy Collins

I turn around on the gravel
and go back to the house for a book,
something to read at the doctor’s office,
and while I am inside, running the finger
of inquisition along a shelf,
another me that did not bother
to go back to the house for a book
heads out on his own,
rolls down the driveway,
and swings left toward town,
a ghost in his ghost car,
another knot in the string of time,
a good three minutes ahead of me—
a spacing that will now continue
for the rest of my life.

Sometimes I think I see him
a few people in front of me on a line
or getting up from a table
to leave the restaurant just before I do,
slipping into his coat on the way out the door.
But there is no catching him,
no way to slow him down
and put us back in synch,
unless one day he decides to go back
to the house for something,
but I cannot imagine
for the life of me what that might be.

He is out there always before me,
blazing my trail, invisible scout,
hound that pulls me along,
shade I am doomed to follow,
my perfect double,
only bumped an inch into the future,
and not nearly as well-versed as I
in the love poems of Ovid—
I who went back to the house
that fateful winter morning and got the book.

The poem also reminded me of the ‘Burnt Toast Theory’ which essentially talks about how if you burn your toast in the morning, although it feels like a shitty start to the day, the time you spend making another toast (or complaining) is probably a way of making sure you end up in the right place at the right time. Which also reminded me of Ted Mosby’s speech about the Universe aligning things in the Season 4 finale of How I Met Your Mother.

I’m not sure if I fully subscribe to such a deterministic view of the world, but it can be comforting sometimes!