And It Was The Knowing That Did It Poem by Alexandre Nodopaka

By the time I was 12 years old I had been an avid reader with little
interest in fluff fiction except for Inspecteur Maigret and Hercule
Poirot detective stories. By then I had read complete books and
readers' digests 'excerpts from the world classical literature.
Of course when I say complete books it is in the same sense I was
not 12 years old but was precisely 11-and-a-half-years-old and was
already acutely aware that speaking in percentages was more precise
than speaking in approximations.

And it was the knowing of it that did it.

My other fixation on estimations was to fill my shelves with
books. At that stage of my socio-psychological mental
development I abhorred voids by lining up books alpha
numerically and by author, positioned them vertically and when
an empty space necessitated by the absence of sufficient books
to fill it and though I preferred to keep them upright but in such
times was forced to lay them flat. I made sure the spine faced out
for ease of reading of titles. I formed stacks sufficiently high to
prevent the adjoining tomes from falling over. Sometimes I
broke my own rules and propped a book at an angle but then
I thought it was quite creatively abstract as I was very much into
contemporary art at the time also and abstract was in like a flint.

And it was the knowing of it that did it.

Therefore keeping everything horizontal and orthogonal to
each other than interrupted by an occasional an slant was more
than a convenience. Later in life such conditions led me naturally
to an engineering profession where everything for the sake of
simplicity was at straight angles despite the curvature of the universe.
The collecting of books in those times, as I remember,
was as valuable as shirts were and for a lost button or a torn page
one lost a weekend's privileges. Nor would one dare discard them
just because of a missing button or a binding or
a page the way we do today.

And it was the knowing that did it.

From the wages of rewards and fear and good behavior allowances
I bought books one at a time. Not the way I do now, by the bagful,
for one dollar at the Friends of the Libraries, where upon eagerly
awaited occasions I give free reign to my literary obsessions and
wheel out a cart full of books, which I donate back within 6 months
hardly having read any of them because I already had done so.
Of course I mostly read these from local biblios, which does not
compare to owning hardbound first editions copies one can
refer to at one's leisure something one hardly does nowadays on
account of everything being available on personal computer
search engines. One thing I regret for sure is that the large
over-size coffee table books made excellent paperweights,
something the pixels cannot replace since quite often I use books
as paperweights to hold freshly bound covers glued flat.

And it was the knowing that did it.

So that one time I chose a book I have read umpteen years ago
where Dostoyevski experiments in self-hypnosis that reminded me
of my own early dabbling in metaphysics. Attempting to duplicate
the famous author I was able, after much practice, to do it almost
at will until that one time, I stepped behind the mirror and lost
my way back. From that point onward I decided to never do it
again because as you would have it, upon lighting a candle in
the dark and positioning it under my chin I looked a flickering ghoul
that hypnotized itself and traversing the mirror my spirit exited
the other side.

And it was the knowing that did it.

And as I tried to catch and put it back where it belonged I gasped
from fright. It was my first ever, conscious out-of-body experience.
The occurrence was frightening but I was sufficiently curious
to practice it again several times over the next few weeks
whereas I would enter the mirror in small incremental steps.
Then came a time I became totally secure in my virtual travels because
each time I would find my way back until one night my spirit saw
itself in the mirror behind the mirror and again I wasn't sure which
of me was the real me as pinching became real on either side.

And it was the knowing that did it.

The following years I experimented further when upon falling asleep
I would leave my body and fly instantaneously incredible distances
and at great heights and at a speeds exceeding the one of thought by
simply extending my arms. Yet I would land like a gracious bird on
any terrain until that one time when I flew so high I lost sight of the earth.
That was the last time I flew because I sensed I became either
atomically small or astronomically large and did not know which I was.

And it was the not knowing that did it.

Then there was that time I told a friend in great detail of the dream
I had the preceding night and she, upon listening till the end of it without
interruption told me she dreamt the same and from the details of
hers I knew hers were identical to mine, which I didn't share with her.
And then I knew we were together in that one solitary dream.

And it was the knowing that did it.

~~~