Chaos as a filing system

Among the crumbling volumes in the back of ancient bookstores, scavengers are scanning pages. They believe that all of the world’s knowledge is long out of print. “I will find it, save it, and work it into my thesis. Somewhere, mis-shelved in a university library, is the book for me.”

They don’t know that this is the only proper context for this kind of knowledge. Attempts to preserve it, actually take it further from its proper context. (A story is only in context when one is unaware of its context.)

More meaning can be extracted from the typeface, the stain that soaks through the first three chapters, and the author’s birthplace, than from the book’s Dewey Decimal Number.

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