I held a newspaper in my hand and examined everything about it except for the words. \u00a0I ran my fingers over the soft, bumpy paper. \u00a0I brought my nose close, breathed in, and could smell something almost sweet. \u00a0I looked over the letters printed in crisp black ink. \u00a0I didn’t read them, but I examined them. \u00a0I took note of their sharp, serif font that gave off an air of importance about the words printed regardless of the actual significance of what they spelled out. \u00a0I ran my finger over the side and felt the edges ruffle as my finger pushed down and then released them allowing for little puffs of air to be felt by a hand that was held close enough. \u00a0I opened it and fully listened to the crackling sound that the pages made as they were all pulled tight against each other. \u00a0I looked at this newspaper. \u00a0I didn’t read it, but I looked at in its physical entirety. \u00a0I could burn this newspaper. \u00a0I could make into a pile of ash and separate the individual grains of ash into a million that could ride on the back of a summer breeze into another world and never be called a newspaper again. \u00a0The words on the newspaper were different. \u00a0They made reference to truths that existed with or without the words. \u00a0I could read about a family that lost their house in a fire or the obituary of Seymour Williams and how he died far sooner than he should have in a terrible car accident, but I’d just be reading the words. \u00a0I wouldn’t be in those moments where I could possibly change something. \u00a0That family’s home is gone. \u00a0It keeps burning down and down no matter how many times any person should read about it. \u00a0The contents of Seymour’s head will be on the dashboard of his nearly folded in half Chrysler until the end of time, and I can’t do anything about it. \u00a0Reading about it won’t help anything no matter how hard I try. \u00a0The words will say the same thing every time they are read, and if they don’t, the truth that the words once spelled out will continue to be the truth regardless of those words. \u00a0I can burn that newspaper. \u00a0I can burn away the words that tell such terrible truths, but all I’ll get from it is a pile of ash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I held a newspaper in my hand and examined everything about it except for the words. \u00a0I ran my fingers over the soft, bumpy paper. \u00a0I brought my nose close, breathed in, and could smell something almost sweet. \u00a0I looked over the letters printed in crisp black ink. \u00a0I didn’t read them, but I examined … Continue reading “Newspaper”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":793,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions\/793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}