I was just quietly living my life, and suddenly all this stuff is happened, stuff that shows that someone has been watching me, knows private things about me … I’m being contacted by strangers, online and in person. I’m still not entirely sure what to think of it. Something about it feels slightly sinister.
But, possibly against my better judgment, I did go look to see if the numbers on the book were a library code, and indeed they are, sort of. I’ll post some photos here of what I found; I’m not sure what I found, to be honest, except that it was once a book. It seems to me like it’s now something else as well.
It was The Star Factory, by Ciaran Carson. I found it in the stacks, in between astronomy and physics. It's not either of those things.
The Star Factory is a novel, but someone’s totally changed the book from what it once was ... It’s been written in, not just written in, but drawn all over, with strange diagrams and words blacked out and whole sections changed. Have a look.
The book has been planted. The decimal code is just written onto the spine of the book, not typed onto a sticker like every other library book, and there’s nothing on the inside to indicate it’s a library book.
And I know someone left it for me to find. This was written on the last page.
Appropriately, today is Friday the 13th.
I need to have a think. More later.
Interesting. According to http://www.library.illinois.edu/ugl/about/dewey.html#500 524 is "not assigned or no longer in use" in the Dewey Decimal System, but it's in between "523 Specific celestial bodies & phenomena" and "525 Earth (Astronomical geography)"--between heaven and earth, I guess you could say.
ReplyDeleteis there a page 185 in the book and if so, can you please tell me what is on that page?
ReplyDeleteEK, that's fascinating. Maybe useful soon.
ReplyDeletePage 185 is part of a section called "The Panoramic Photograph Company." It describes two photographs of High Street taken in the 1850s.
What do you think OPIHN means?
ReplyDeleteI was wondering the same thing. I haven't been able to figure it out yet.
ReplyDeleteHi Ana. This book looks like it has a lot of clues in it... have you taken any other photos of this book? If so, please direct me to them, if not, please take some more! Especially of pages that look like they follow a pattern.
ReplyDeleteWith regards to the torn section, the bracketed part of the following paragraph:
"[To someone looking through piles of old letters, a stamp that has long been out of circulation on a torn envelope often says more than a reading of dozens of pages... Stamps bristle with tiny] numbers, minute letters, diminutive leaves and eyes, They are graphic cellular tissue. All this swarms about and, like lower animals, lives on even when mutilated. This is why such powerful pictures can be made of pieces of stamps stuck together. But in them, life always bears a hint of corruption to signify that it is composed of dead matter. Their portraits and obscene groups are littered with bones and riddled with worms."
What do you think? Do old stamps and letters remind you of anything you've seen or received recently?
Naglfar... maybe she she should check the envelope the images came to her on...
ReplyDeleteOn Twitter, rjt1978 suggested OPIHN might be Greek. Taken as Greek letters, OPIHN sounds a bit like Orion, though it's not the proper translation.
ReplyDeleteThis would make a lot of sense given the Orion chases the Pleiades and that the constellation Orion is often used to find other constellations.
BTW, Ana - what's the background image on your blog?
ReplyDelete