The White That Will Get Dirty

This book, like Becoming, has chosen a kind of white that will get dirty.

The cover and belly band are neither laminated nor given a stain-resistant coating. It will be touched by hands, worn by turning, and slowly changed in color by light and air. The longer a book stays in someone’s hands, the more traces of that person it carries.

This is intentional.

Becoming says: these changes themselves are this book happening.

Being would like to add softly beside it: at every moment in which change happens, this book is wholly here.

When it has just been printed and still carries the smell of ink, it is. When someone has read halfway through it and folded down a corner, it is. When it bears the traces of hands, when its edges have softened and its pages have yellowed, it is still.

At no moment is it more in Being;

at no moment is it less in Being.

We often think that being clean is the original state, and that once something is dirtied, it has moved farther away from what it originally was. And so we are always trying to go back—to the self that had not been dirtied, the self that had not been hurt, the self that had not yet taken a wrong turn.

But white was never its original state; dirt is not its departure.

People are the same. When you are joyful, you are. When you are in pain, you are. When you are lost, you are too. What you thought you had lost was never lost.

So there is no need to preserve it in its original appearance. Pick it up. Turn its pages. Leave your traces on it. Not one trace you leave will make it any less in Being.

White will get dirty.

Books will grow old.

People will change.

And Being—

neither increases nor decreases.