Secret Music

I love the sound of flipping pages. In a room where there is no other music but the gentle caress of one's fingers as they turn a page, or the brisk shuffling of paper sheets like playing cards, but softer.

I discovered this quiet joy when I was a child. A man was seated across the table where I sat. He was browsing through a magazine, as I was silently reading a book. Innocently, he turns a page, past leaf unfolding to future, and in fleeting precious splits of a second, everything seemed to move in slow motion. My hairs began to prickle, goosebumps spread like wildfire across my skin, as if being massaged by ghosts. This minute ecstasy occurred as he turned a single page. I'm glad he was reading a magazine, because such pages are mostly non-committal, ephemeral flashes, so his flipping was brief, repetitive and rhythmic. He went on from page to page to page, and the mesmerizing sound that such "un-paging" created went across the table and rippled through my body. I was no longer reading, instead lost, on the blissful waves of passing pages that touched and  penetrated.

Until he stumbles into something that finally took his interest, and lingers there for a while. I remained seated, flushed and feeling deprived, yet secretly overjoyed by this innocent awakening. I returned to my book, disoriented for while, trying to remember what was the last word I read.



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