Note Opera, Updated

Years ago HERE I wrote:

Last night I started reading a used book, and I guess it had been used as a textbook before because a few pages in I started see hand-written notes in the margins. I started wondering who was this person? Where is she right now (the handwriting was obviously a woman's)? What's happened in her life since she read the book? I started wondering if there's ever been a time when two people were brought together this way - someone falls in love with someone's handwritten notes in a book, and then tracks that person down (maybe they had written their name in the book.) 

Then all of a sudden a few pages later I started seeing a second set of notes, of a different handwriting. A dude's handwriting. Amazing how things change then, right? "Oh, who the fuck does this dude think he is?" I'd sneer. I'd look at what he'd written or underlined and scoff "what an idiot!" or "gee, no shit, professor!!!" Then I'd look at her notes and would hear The Sound of Music in the background wjhile nodding my head "yes, so true, so right...YES! great insight!!!" 

So now I've got this fucking soap opera going on as I'm reading this fucking book. Except I have no idea who the people are or what they even look like. Or if they're dead or alive. It's fucking exhausting.

Via SULLY we see a guy wondering a somewhat similar thing re: notes found in books:

For whatever reason, I happened to open the book and saw the message from Mark to Joey.Something about that note, handwritten by an unknown to an unknown of whose whereabouts,gender and relationship I was unaware, struck me as both tragic and powerful. …
Maybe someday this book will again find its way to Mark or Joey and I’ll get to meet them, and ask them if it worked out, if their orgasmic moments were enough to survive life’s difficulties.