This is the dream. There is no bookstore finer than this, the prices, unmarked, as if it were an insult to put a value on knowledge, the bookstore, this bookstore, a river of thought, the sum of human knowledge and experience, it's stock overflowing, there is everything you could want to read, and if you don't find it today, try again next week. There are the attempts at categorization - Philosophy, Travel, Religion, Magik, History, Fiction, The Sciences - Biology through Geology and Astronomy, autobiographies and biographies oppose one another across an angry aisle, shelves evolve, moving throughout the store as if on their own accord, today Poetry, overflowing, may find itself inexplicably moving a shelf up or down or to the left or the right by the time you visit again next week.
Know the impossibility of categorizing everything, a book can be 1/3 philosophy, 2/3 religion and 100% fiction and complete and utter rubbish, usually it's own shelf, outside the store on a table marked free.
It's lit with Edison bulbs, in most instances the glow from the filament enough for you to read the cover, but not so well the contents - this is, after all, a bookstore, not a library.
The sections overflow with books, the shelves, full, books behind books, there are books on top of books, there are stacks of books piled up upon the floor in front of the shelf they would be on, if there were room left upon the shelf. There are a great many books.
The sections, marked, not labeled, geology for example, is indicated with a few sliced geodes, some larger crystals of quartz or amethyst, Cartography, if it's a section, with an beautifully illustrated atlas open upon a shelf, a sextant or old brass ships compass in a lacquered box, art books, oversized, beneath a painting that changes weekly, artists pay to hang their work here, who wouldn't? And so it goes, you discover through exploring, moving towers of books to discover more towers of books, to see the titles under glass, to - as is the custom - peruse.
So there are of course times where you will speak with the proprietor, interrupt him, he is reading - always - he's genial, and will tell you where, point you in the general direction, advise you of where last he spotted what it is that you are looking for. And - in my own experience, and others, he knows everything, if not pointing he'll take you there and help you rummage in person, only - he's not rummaging, he looks quick, picks it out of the stack and hands it to you. And this is not the extraordinary part. No, the extraordinary part is when he offers you up some quote or intelligent criticism of it, refers you to another author that pairs with this, or that doesn't at all - but - "You should read them both.". That he has read them all, it is impossible, but -
And there are the books. The moderns, you know, but the dusty antique tomes everywhere, the first editions, Illustrations by Gustave Doré, Oversized Antique books of even more antique maps, there are rarities and literary curiosities, you can get carried away in here, there are the true first and only editions, written in the authors own hand before taking his life off such-and-such bridge, before marrying, before becoming a journalist or noteworthy painter, there are the journals of the Polar, Amazonian, African Explorers, there are moleskin journals filled with illustrations, colored in with watercolor or felt marker, all of these - as is natural - will be substantially more expensive - you expect this, you know - there are small recipe card cabinets filled with antique postcards, lacy valentines and others of a substantially racier tone, there are photographs of people a hundred years since dead, there are albums of stamps, baseball cards, ephemera of every imagining, bound up editions of old newspapers, there are bundles of letters, correspondence - these - no, they cannot be broken up, and no - they are deeply personal. They are to be bought sight unseen, you can have the joy of opening each letter for yourself, the envelopes and handwriting slight clues as to their contents.
There is the smell of old books, like cognac or fine cigars, something intoxicating in the decaying paper, that could keep you here for hours...
Not always what you're looking for, but always what you need. If you can't find what you're looking for ask for the recommendation. He will ask you a few questions, recent books, the impression they made, your review, never critical, merely curious, helpful. And then he'll find it, place it in your hands, the price - well, variable - pay it - it doesn't have to be cheap, although often it is, you get what you pay for, and - always, without fail, indubitably, you will be elevated. It will be the sum of the last 3 books you loved +1. You will have fallen in love with a new place, county, country, person, a new adventure or planet - whatever - to your taste - and where does he find time to read all this? To know his inventory so thoroughly?.
She is there, in the bookstore, browsing now...
My god do I miss you.
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- Category: Love
She was beautiful. You know it, we all know it when we see it, the Anima, the Muse.
It's the recognition of a kindred spirit. Someone who knows - who has thoughts and opinions and knows when and how to gently speak them. They don't have to be your own, merely well enough conceived that they're considerable.
We've all met the beautiful woman who quickly turned ugly within a few carelessly spoken thoughts or opinions. Maybe they were brusque with the waiter or the clerk, or they subscribed to some lunatic conspiracy theory, voted for the wrong party, or - simply, but not so much, read the wrong books.
This is good, they give it away, save you the time. And we've met the plain woman who through genial words and education becomes beautiful. They are much rarer. A cultivated mind, even a curious mind, is - in this day and age - a curiosity.
She's walking, a rainy spring night, restaurants overflowing, the lights from within mirrored and deformed in the street. She keeps under the awnings. Loud conversations, enthusiasms, profanity, divert her, stepping into the street to pass lines, crowds, a dozen different restaurants, in the span of 8 blocks she's passed by France, Italy, Mexico, Germany, 2 Variations on China, Thailand, Japan, still, she's walking.
It all smells delicious.
There are the Antique shops, chandeliers flickering over golden woven tapestries, candelabra, tablecloths, linens, giant moon-phase grandfather clocks, crockery, old paintings by forgotten masters, a shop that specializes in maritime antiquities, brass sextants, box compasses, lamps, bells, portholes, a diving helmet, another that fills it's bay window with crockery, in designs and sets, there are art galleries, the thrift stores which economy frequents and patience rewards, there are the commonplace shops as well, the generic background of cheap consumer goods that are made exclusively to be turned into landfill and prop up the further flung suburbs.
She is beautiful. How do we meet?
Left, down a narrow flight of stairs, a yellow welcoming light, a swinging "P" that somehow resembles a charmed little girl opening a box which spills light upon the sign, - on the rippling paned-glass windows, "The Pandora Press", this bookstore, open here at the end of the world, until late.
Late. The bookstores hours, indefinite, and, depending on when you're looking it can seemingly roll up and disappear, but it's here tonight, and it's open.
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- Category: Love
Understanding. I say chair, you say chair, we understand each other well enough.
But, I say chair and in my mind I am imagining, say an Eames Chair, shaped plywood with leather and footstool, and you, you are thinking of something different - an ornate wing-backed chair, or a vinyl covered chair tucked up to an Arborite table, well, then - we are not so close.
I could describe in greater and greater detail - the Eames Chair, perhaps you don't know the brand, and so I will tell you about it's curves, lines, place in contemporary-modern furniture, but this - perhaps - is going a little far. Even the color - unless it were important - is going a little far. How much embellishment does a chair need? What does it matter? It's a chair.
You see the possibilities for misunderstanding. For confusion. You and I - we could read exactly the same story or novel and understand it in completely different ways.
The chair - it's not important. But some of these things, well, maybe they are that important. If I talk about Love what will you be understanding?
We will see.
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- Category: Love
He-she. You-Me. Of course I would not be so cruel as to take you all the way back, there is a great deal to be presumed and which I am sure you have considered. History, in any summing up, is infinite, theories only model upon what we can observe, and our observations are limited by our senses. So - there is much I will ignore. But look down and consider our history. What lies underfoot. Our history.
The city; any great city, is built and rebuilt upon countless predecessors.
The first few feet: cigarette butts, broken needles, plastic bags, aluminum cans, paper, cloth masks, filth, deeper into the broken china, clay pipes, the possibility of a lost coin or pocket watch. Dig deeper.
Underfoot. We stand blithely unaware upon the great abyss of history, treading it down, it lies, by and large, sealed from us beneath layers of cobbles, concrete, pavement, asphalt. Where it pokes up it's fingers, where we've thought to preserve it in such and such notable castle or cathedral or house, these are but the slenderest fractions of our history, splinters being eroded even as we consider them.
The asphalt, the concrete, the pavement and the cobbles, they protect, insulate us from this great collective unconscious.
Consider the dead. We trample their skeletons, they outnumber us a thousand to one - more, simply, the innumerable dead, they are legion, skeletons lying in cold graves, ashes scattered from pyres on the banks of the Ganges, flesh picked clean and gathered by vultures and rained in excrement across far Mountain Peaks, the crushed and pecked bones of American Indians fallen from trees, gnawed and chewed into soil, Pirates run through with cutlasses and left buried upon rotting chests, the evaporated outlines of countless drowned sailors adorn the bottoms of every ocean, Catacombs with their screaming dead, Egyptian Mummies dug from warrens of tombs, so numerous they powered steam trains, their cremains turned into soot and ground into pigment, a fine layer of progress and ash that blankets the Country, ancient Roman and Egyptian Sarcophagi, Chinese Emperors in subterranean cities guarded by terracotta soldiers and surrounded by mercury rivers, dig anywhere and you will find them. Dig, dig, through wells run dry and filled in with rubbish, crushed bottles and crockery, ancient lead pipes filled with poisoned water, through forgotten tunnels and underground temples, through abandoned mines, veins of gold, silver, lead, pickaxes and shovels left behind, through layers of knapped flint and arrowheads, past the bones of Sabre-Toothed tigers, Ice age rhinos and Giant Sloths and Wooly Mammoths, bones crushed to suck out the marrow. Dig into caves sealed by the ages filled with drawings of man; animals, hunts, symbols, that flicker to life by the light of your burning torch, The 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 countdown of fingers in handprints blown onto the walls, the exhale of breath breathing life into the images, the pecked paintings of buffalo and bison and great mammoths, the beginnings of symbolic thought. Neolithic, this, the very dawn of Magik, understanding - now - intuitive - that Will and Intention become reality - or is this still just memory? Merely the recording of a successful hunt? It's impossible to say.
It's not impossible at all.
We will dig again later. Together.
It's necessary, this underground, it's our foundation.
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- Category: Love