A splay of papers

On a dank, cold, wet winter day when I am too sick to go outside, I am rummaging through a file folder labeled "Important Papers." I spread them out on the table and look at them as if they are tarot cards. This is your past.

I was a working class girl, unwanted. I tried to be invisible and stay out of trouble. I found books. In a house where the only books were the Bible and Peyton Place, my primary hunger was for books, for education. Before I knew what education meant, I set my heart on it. Not so I could get a job or make money or support myself, although I knew that would be necessary. What first drove me was the desire to know what I thought civilized, privileged people knew. Later, studies in class dynamics modified that and sent me back to the voiceless people I came from, with a desire to give voice to the misfits among them.

I escaped the drudgery, the secrecy, and the shame of my family in books. I wanted to read great books and to gather the sweep of history into my brain and hold it. I wanted to see and understand art and music, to make meaning, to redeem myself by making the world a better place. But first I had to learn. That hunger drove everything else.

I wonder what the primary hunger of each person is. I wish I could search through the Important Papers of each person I know, see what each person's papers tell about their hungers and drives, their ambitions and mistakes. Each of us has a fistful of papers, trivial and life-changing, that hold the secrets of a personal universe.