laughter is the best medicine?

i love used bookstores. not just because the books are cheaper, although there IS that. but sometimes, just sometimes, it feels like you're sharing something with someone, someone you don't even know. getting a glimpse into their life, their literature, and occasionally something even more intimate, their beliefs, hopes and dreams exposed for a few brief seconds, hidden in the pages of my latest literary find.
today, however, it also made me just a little sad.
the book, poking off hte edge of the shelf as though calling to me, was Shel Silverstein's "falling up".
i positively adore Shel. his poems always make me smile, sometimes make me laugh, and generally remind me of all the innocent and simple things that i share with the rest of the world, or at least the parts that really matter.
on the inside back cover, in pen, accompanying the picture of a child's small legs whose torso and above had vanished into the place where the pages meet, the following:

the end of the book
no use to look
for any more, my dear,
'cause if you try finding
some more in the binding,
you may just... disappear.

bye bye.

S.S.

and in the front, in the same pen, but different penmanship:

For sacha
I remember how you
laughed yourself sillier
and sillier...
Ed, '98

the first question i want to ask myself is not how this treasure came to find itself deposited with so many other common things on the shelf of a used bookstore. it's a relevant question, just not the first.
no, first, i would have to wonder.

what could have happened to sacha? what was it that caused this little girl who laughed herself sillier and sillier with Shel to say goodbye to something so personal? there are so many possibilities, so many questions, so many reasons it could be.

i sonder if she loved it still. if giving it up was difficult, one of those things that was necessary. i wonder if the few dollars for which she traded it and whatever she bought with them was worthy of such a sacrifice, or if it was even a sacrifice to begin with. perhaps she just "grew up", with all the ugly connotations that come with that affliction, and decided she was too old for it. perhaps she just stopped caring and hawked the book for enough scratch to score some of that fine, fine saskatoon meth that we've been hearing so much about these days. as much as i want to believe that it was with a few small tears and a little heartfelt reluctance that she relinquished it, i also want to believe that some things are never sold, and that pricelessness still exists.

i don't really know, but it makes me afraid. afraid for sacha. afraid for all of us. are we all so busy striving for adulthood, for responsibility, for our own greedy satisfaction, that we've forgotten how to laugh ourselves silly? do we now think it undignified? uncouth? just not done?

today, we take a lesson from david, who was more than willing to be undignified before his God if that was what it took. today, we take a lesson from Jesus, who told us that unless we come as children, we don't get in. today, we take a lessonf from sacha, who, i hope, has still retained that joy, that love, because the world needs it all, and if it can be sold for 7 bucks to a bookstore on 8th street, then we might be in more trouble than we think.

the poem she bookmarked:

dancin' in the rain

so what if it drizzles
and dribbles and drips?
i'll splash in the garden,
i'll dance on the roof.
let it rain on my skin,
it can't get in - -
i'm waterproof.

smile. laugh. dance on the roof in the rain. remember joy and love and life.
and share them.