Encyclopedia

Most grocery stores here have dishes for special promotions. I bought a china dinner plate and a cup and saucer set when I moved here last August. That plate is white with green ivy leaves around the edge. Then, when it was early December and my mother was taking the bus up for a weekend visit, I bought another dinner plate and a mug. That pattern has small pine branches, mainly needles with a few pine cones nestled close. At least all the dishes are white with green decoration. I splurged and bought a red candle, one of those pillar ones, that smelled like spices when it burned. That was our centerpiece.

When I was nine, the grocery store down the block did something different. One Saturday Mom brought home the first two volumes of an encyclopedia. The first was only ninety-nine cents but the second was $3.99. After that, she bought a volume when she could, but we never did get the full set.

And we wish it could hold everything, don't we? Obsessively we categorize, alphabetize, simplify, sqooshing the juicy funny awkward dripping parts of life into dark printed digital squiggles on the proverbial page. Some people know how to read encyclopedias backwards, so that every entry is a question.

an encyclopedia is about the opposite of an association-blaster. all the entries claim to be scientifically/historically/socially etc. proven and can be read from a to z. its very effective if you want to know about how our society works (from a to z that is, orderly and straight), but you should be very suspicious about the contents.