The Phonebook

The Phonebook

Humanist: of or pertaining to human affairs, nature, welfare or values.

The need to connect.

The Humanist Truth.

Connection.  Relation.

The phonebook.

Unabashedly representing this need in its most literal value- page after page after page.

I was on a quest.  I was looking for a sign.

I saw the wreckage, the ruin, the house looked vacant.

I took a step in the gate.

Footsteps.

Snooping I was and snooping I was caught - and snooping I was invited.

"To be adventurous", he said.  Architecture.  30 years ago.  He was one of my kind.

I went to the back.  More damage, more decay.  But nothing for me. 

Walking out...on with the quest .

And there it was.  It lay before the end.

The Phonebook.

In all its glory, in all its shame.

Crumpled like it had been stepped on, drenched like it had been rained on for days.

The connections.  The man.  The reaching out.  The relations.

The sign.  He was it.  It was it.

Our need to find and attach and seek togetherness amongst the chaos--of the world, or a junky backyard.

So many numbers.  Stores.  Homes.  Businesses.

Gone.  Wiped away with the water.  Faded away with the time.

Our part so apparent - yet now, an attempt so devastated in the wrath of a storm.

And there I had it, in my hand.  It weighed me down and lifted me up.

As if we couldn't live without it.  The connections.  The reaching out.

The ability.  To expand.  To search and to find.

To explore.  To compare.  To try, and to try again.

It was all in my hand.  Weighing me down, lifting me up.

Soaking.  Page, after page, after page...

The Phonebook.