The World of Worms

My older brother called them “books.”  He had many of them in his room, many, but never allowed me even to touch them, you can believe me.  Very often I would see him in the armchair with a thick book on his lap and very irritable.  He never wanted me to be present in the same room where he sat and read, and constantly complained that I disturb him.  Maybe, I asked too many questions, I am not sure.  Maybe, the eighteen years difference in age made my questions seem nonsensical to him.  Three-year-old child’s thinking differs significantly from the logic of a twenty-one-year-old adult, for sure.  Yeah, I could not understand what special he finds about that plain paper where was drawn an infinite number of black worms.  They covered the whole leaves of the books, and my brother could stare the whole hours at them, and I could stare the whole hours at him... but…
“Go, find somewhere else a place for your games,” my brother would often say to me with a certain dignity in his voice, and I would walk out disappointed that he is interested not in me, but in those thick, dusty, and boring books.  They did not look very attractive.  If he would allow me to dispose them, I might have used them only as bricks to build a defense wall for my castle that I have made of the table, few chairs, and a blanket.  Sometimes I sneaked into his room to grab some books jut for that purpose, but that’s another story, and I won’t tell anything more about it now.
Once, my brother himself called me and gave (!) the book to me.  It was not of those that he read himself, but I liked it.  It seemed to be new, for I never saw a book so shiny and colorful, full of amazingly beautiful pictures, wow!  And there were not so many worm-like shapes as in the books he used to read.  I shuffled the leaves, one after another, anxious to understand the secret that surrounded this book.  I examined the pictures closely, and even some worms.
“Could you read the book yourself?” asked my brother and I did not know what to answer.  Of course, I knew the way to stare at pictures and worms, but was that reading?
“Look, you know all the letters, right?” insisted he, but I still was not aware what he has in his hairy mind.  “What does he mean?” wondered I.
“Come here,” he took me and sat me on his laps, and we spent the whole evening together.  I listened to him talking about various things, which I could not understand completely but was interested enough to listen attentively.  He taught me the names of these funny black worms that filled pages and pages in the books.  He told me that they know so many interesting stories, that I could spend the rest of my life trying to read them all.  We spent together many evenings, until I began to understand what these worms are trying to tell me.  And later, we would sit in the same room quietly, both communicating with worms.
Almost two decades passed from that time, but I still think of the words as of worms.  I think of them as of little funny and sympathetic creatures with a phenomenal ability to transcend through the space between the leaves of the book and my eyes right into my mind.  They crawl into my brain, making friendships with my thoughts, getting into conflicts with them, and again, being in agreement with them.  They tell me stories about the past, the present, and the future, life and death.  I become acquainted with the history of humanity and various sciences.  I learn many things about the arts and the artists – painters, sculptors, poets, actors...  They also tell me how important are human feelings and emotions.  I hear about the ultimate love and the ultimate hatred, ultimate happiness and ultimate sorrow.  While wandering in the world of worms I have learned to live in the world of people.  I am happy.