The egyptian bookmark

Several years ago, one of my friends gave me a beautiful bookmark from one of her travels. She had gone to Egypt to see the Sphinx and the pyramids, a place I imagine deep within my dreams. I didn't use to use bookmarks, but when I met my human, Chris, he was appalled that I dog-eared my pages. How could one mark up such a sacred thing as a book?! Keeper of words, teller of stories from lands through time--journeys through other people's minds. Books are my lifeblood, and I was so tickled to fall in love with another being who shared my passion for reading. I would come home to him, reading by candlelight in the bed. This is the stuff of my dreams, only it's real. He's cool, definitely a cool person, my sweet sweet human!
Therefore, I started using bookmarks. A little thing, but a holy little thing. The good thing is that he doesn't care that I write notes in my books, highlight and the like. I get really excited when we find new books that are just so good we have to share them with each other. One such book he and I recently read was The Road by Cormack McCarthy. Thank god for the book section of Goodwill, right? The Road really sparked our inspiration for preparing for disaster. What would we do if we were alone together at the end of the world? What if we had all the time in the world and none? We would survive--survive, read, live, and get lost in the new world until we became the world. Do you ever wonder how you would look at the world if there was no more electronic communication, no more electronic technology to hold the pieces of this world together? I don't believe it would fall apart so much as that it would change. Life, at my first thought, would be about the things that really matter. Only, that life is made up of so many little things. 
A book that really made me question what matters is Reading Lolita In Tehran by Azar Nafizi. Life, there in Iran was imaginably being ripped apart at the seams, but the living parts of life remained. Sometimes the things we think matter aren't really the things that matter at all. Life is so damn complicated sometimes (excuse the language, it helps to fluff up the colour of my writing). 
One book I would absolutely recommend is Habibi, a graphic novel by Craig Thompson. While very triggering, it pulls open these living parts of life, in the midst of a desert aboard a ship encased in sand. It shook me to my core, and I couldn't pull my eyes away--the way you can't pull your eyes away from a terribly painful memory. Inside this memory, one stands in the shadows, gently fingering the picture as if it is made of onionskin paper, just wanting to reach out and protect them self, their past self. But one must watch the memory happen, and feel all feelings, lest they break the thin paper protecting the balance between the here and now. 
It's hard, sometimes, to watch. But it is human. To be human is to feel all feelings. 
So I sit here, looking at this Egyptian bookmark, wondering the stories it has to tell after being stuck in the middle of so many stories, so many pages. I run my fingers across the papyrus and think how truly lucky we are in this life to have stories.