A treasure from the shelf...

A treasure from the shelf…

He held it in his hands. It was a rare piece of treasure. It had come to him at a difficult moment of his life´s silly journey. Now he all of a sudden felt rich. The author of the book was named Björn von Knohultstierna. He was made an aristocrat in the old days. This he could find on Google.

The book he had borrowed at the Vaxjö library was an odd example from the 1600s or so. Text that was difficult to read and interpret. Text that had an aura of the past.

More so than ever he was mad about Facebook and the Internet. He had more a love for the foreign ways to think in ways that seemed forgotten and forbidden. 1600s Sweden-Eden!

It was probably a mistake that the library had given him the permission to have it in his hands. But the computor had at that day been out of order and the staff had to hand the treasure out in the oldish and the traditional way of a manual way. Like a real thing from the past. He made up plots in his mind to get over the whole book as his own. He should refuste returning it…

He turned the pages in a holy and tremendous manner, in a manner he had never felt before.

He found out that old men could have words of both power and yet a distinctive aura of a belonging. Be it the church, the class, the people, the priests. Above all the 1600s priest who had at a sudden turn of the history become more of Luther People and had to follow the new trend within the church. All this he could read out, and more so than that.

He had found out that lots of the poets and men of letters in those days either worked for the king or for the church. He read out a lot of information that made him, Göran, feel that he was given his own place of the map. And as he was studying cultural sociology he had a true reason to phone his professor, Mats Trondman, and hand over some kind of information. He read from the treasure and Göran was so pleased and so satisfied that he felt he had no more reason to listen to his sister, she who tried to smash his brain with the latest news about the latest gender issue.

A man he was from now on. A Swedish man of his own woods, knock three times! A man of the Småland landscape that used to be the poorest area of Sweden. NO more so, he mumbled. No more poor, as he held this treasure in his queer hands. Yes, he was gay and he was a sort of believer.

He had come to the conclusion that books held spiritualism, as they stretched back in Mankind´s history. A heritage of one´s own perhaps!

He turned pages. They were brittle and filled with stuff, matter and dust. The dust touched his nostrils and he had to sneeze. The dust was as old as – how old would one guess? Of course the words was a gift to...whom? To the people?

He phoned the professor and asked if he could arrange a kind of workshop at the library. Göran would like to give a speech and explain all about the treasure. But as he was thinking about to steal the book he must come up with something else. Now Trondman had lots of contacts and he could arrange something. Göran was going to held a speech at the Linneus university, but with restrictions.

But how ever it came to be Göran could notice that the book he had borrowed was not registered to his card. It was like it did not exist anymore, and this gripped his guilt with something else. Yes, stolen but now gone into the unknown space? How if it had to be returned safe to its own place? But that day. In the morning paper – Smålandsposten – he read an article that a rare book was gone from the church´s parish hall. It was probably stolen. And it was worth both in money and as a treasure for the church and in the end for the people.

The guilt began nagging upon his bones. That very Swedish lonely shame that came about because the church had a grip still on its inhabitants. The people in this is refused going to mass, although ---

Göran could not figure out why he had found the book on the shelf down at the library if it belonged to the parish.

Then again. The police had made an investigation. The staff at the library had gone to the press and explained that one of the woman working for them had confessed she was to steal the book but had regret it and was about to return it to the parish. She was shown in the paper with photo and all. She was sad and wondered what to do...but where was the rare book? No one knew.

It was valued as the most rare book from the 1600s. It was handwritten, even though books had become to be typed at that time. As a handwritten work it did cost a sum on the international market. Göran did want to own it, but not sell it. Its treasue held a gaze of its own as an object, if object can take upon themselves a life of their own. A living object as rare as a bee nowadays. And the more all the insects disappear the more value the Manmade object seeemed to gain. Because the route back to human history might have to begin with a text, even if the writer is dead. Dead and gone. He had to disappear. (Really? Who?)

Göran felt a whole mixture of things, but figured out he was to give his speech an aura of an installment.

He took lots of photos of the book, turned them into video films on his Facebook, rotating, turning, jumping videos all over the place. He said that he was to hold a speech with the moderator Mats Trondman down in the big room at the university. The day came.

On the screen at the university he showed copies and copies and copies of the treasure, that is the book of the books. Video as installation. He had invited the journalists from Smålandsposten. Even journalists and photographer from lots of magazines and papers throughout Sweden. He had invited the staff from the library. And the Vaxjo people. And three priests. Just about whatever there was. He was to handle back the real thing at that installation. But first he was to hold his speech about what the book had given him.

They sat there, scattered away from one another. Here and there like an audience from a vast area but now turned into the rare few, as lots of them did not dare come.

The parish staff saw the way Göran treated the book. With awe. And that´s it! This awe could not turn him into a simple criminal stealing a treasure that belonged to the people.

The parish staff had their own library and now they felt a new kind of cultural stuff, stuff that books, materials and stuff that tales are made of. Made of people´s deeds and doings. Living experiences.

The parish librarian took the book with white gloves on her hands. She felt it was to be laid into the box again. And the speech Göran had contributed with gave away a room and a space for the treasure. Like it did really had an aura of the past.

But returning it to its ordinary place was not left unnoticed. Lots of journalists wrote about it. And the book had come alive again. And the treasure was known all over Sweden-Eden from that day…

The dust from the book had spread its matter and its content to the world. It was not that much of a stuff, but really not that little either… Dust we are made of, dust we return to one day…

The book had not yet died, although the author had sort of left...