Erasmus in Inniscarra

I noticed this fragment on the front terrace for a day or two before bringing it indoors. Placed on a square of paper it became a drop-down map, somewhere between Italy and Ceylon.

There's an anecdote about Erasmus noticing a scrap of paper on a muddy street and pausing to read it. The printed word was rare in the 15th/16th century; rare also those who could read. Which is still true in the twenty-first century.

It looks like a partly rotted seed packet from Seed Savers. As a child I read labels on jars, info on cereal packets, all kinds of small print, and a constant flow of books. As an adult also. As well as t-shirts and tattoos, cardboard boxes in several languages.

My Erasmus scrap of paper could have continued, out on the terrace, to deteriorate, to transmute, with its inks, into the front garden and beyond.