I've been working on this task for months in my brain. Years, even, if you count childhood anguish.

So close is this to my heart that I knew instantly upon reading it what I had to do. I had to right my wrongdoing, and return the book I had stolen from the San Francisco Public Library's Main Branch when I was a kid.

Before I get to the string-strung explanation of interconnectedness and relation and why I did this and why I thieved, I must explain the thieving, the reconstitution, the agony, guilt and then resolution.

I was writing a report on Colonialism in America. My mother took me to the Main Branch of the San Francisco Public Library to find books on colonialism. I was young, maybe eight, and it was supposed to be a very simple report, but I aimed a little high. I saw a book with its very own matching slipcase, a lively green, with a title embossed in gold on the front and spine, "Colonial Days and Ways". Colonial Days and Ways. The seal of the library was on the cover in the lower right hand corner. The smell of that library is enough to get me going but that book, man, it was somethin, and I will never forget it.


There she is!

I didn't even understand most of it. But it was gold and I was in love. We checked it out. I conveniently forgot to remind my mother about returning the books. It became overdue, then months overdue. I've carried on the awful habit of accruing gloriously large late fees, but I always return them eventually... except for this book. I kept it hidden. I loved it and hated it and lived with guilt from stealing from the library I loved. It even came with me as we moved across the country at age 11 and around the east coast, then back to the bay area again.

In my tritely tumultuous preteen years, I stripped the book of its pages to mod it and to be able to separate it from the memory. I cut the book out of the book. I kept the meat of it hidden and modified the cover into a fabric-lined case.

This task's existence is proof that I was meant to return it in whatever condition I had reduced it to -- as a true apology. I resolved to... resolve the situation, and I wrote a letter about what I did and why I was returning it. I apologized. I assumed someone would find it and read it and it would mean something for a split second. Or, the re-shelving clerks would find it and take it. I wondered if someone would take it or leave it. I left other things in the book shell, which are secret (but which referenced my character name of visivo).

Writing the apology.

Circling the library, I thought nervously about where to shelve it -- its original spot, still there, was too obvious and my modded book didnt stick out enough there. It was astonishingly nerve wracking to carry a book I had loved and stolen and ruined and wanted to return. I was sweating with worry and sadness -- I almost didn't want to give the book up. I stumbled upon an unexpected section. I left it there, under psychological disorder > kleptomania. 616s or thereabouts. It looked out of place among the black- and red-spined sensationalized accounts of thievery, murder, true crime. Its pale fabric lining softly called attention along with the spring green spine -- this was a real book, beautifully bound, squished between two ugly paperbacks.

I checked on it two days later, and my heart leaped to see it was still there. I checked a week later and it was gone.

I am late and hasty in posting this proof -- I shot the book just before returning it and also photographed the letter I wrote, you'll see it here as proof. The whole rest of the ordeal -- the arranging of things inside the book-shell, the replacement upon the shelf -- it was all shot on film with a toy camera, and in moving I lost the roll. If I ever find it, I will post them as further proof. Hopefully what I have here will be sufficient.