This is an old dream. He can't remember precisely when he had it, he was younger, much younger. He - in mind, not body - is travelling through a storm on the ocean, the sky, the sea a deep ultramarine. Great waves reach up to low and ragged slate-grey clouds, fall back again as twisting waterspouts, giant Atlanteans, shrugging the clouds and rain from their shoulders.
In the water, great shadows can be seen moving beneath the phosphorescence of the billows and swells
There's a ship, a galleon, spinning in a hollow, and he lands upon it, enters, the wood glows from within as if lit by amber or flickering embers, a warm light in contrast to the maelstrom outside. Down into a cabin below decks and there is upon it a small iron-bound chest, and as he nears it opens to reveal within a dazzling silver hand, posed holding a pen...
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- Category: Love
At the Bookstore, not so far from the till, are the great shelves and stacks of unsorted books. They await the attention of the proprietor, who is, to all intents and purposes, engrossed in his own book.
He will get to them when he gets to them.
These books, they are a different way to search. A more organic, personal search, most shelves or stacks roughly represent an anonymous reader, each one a snapshot of this particular readers education, tastes, beliefs. Find first a shelf or stack that represents your own tastes. See what they read, if you can find 2 or three or four or more that you approve of you might consider this a fair indicator of someone else's discerning judgement and take a chance on something new. Here ideas join in a natural, human way - and in a way you form a kind of friendship, discover a kindred spirit. It is the bookstore in brief, and, given the obtuseness of his taste, it is from here today he finds a few books. The shelf, he sees upon it Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita", Nabokov's "Lolita", Diaz's "The Conquest of New Spain" and Speke's "The Discovery of the Source of the Nile", Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams", these he has read, but there are a few he hasn't.
Shulgin, Shulgin, the fever dream of experience and living must wait, there are only so many days in the week, so many days to live and for most of them you should be sober.
This is perhaps regrettable.
In the interm, for these days, he needs a book. A few books, here, "The Messiah" by Bruno Schultz,
an older leather bound collection of lacunae from the Book of Psalms, (stamped "Lux In Arcana", an ex-libris, presumably), "The Iniquity of Vertue", by Anonymous, "An informed and exquisitely detailed account of life in the Madelonnettes Convent", Homer's "Margites", Shakespeare's "Cardenio", Melville's "The Isle of the Cross", Flaccus's "These Things Worth Remembering", in rare translation by Philemon Holland, and now, arms quite filled, the owner, laughing at some page he's just read, sitting up, ever congenial,
"Find everything all right?"
"More than I needed. What are you reading?..."
And the bookseller merely laughs and taps his nose, by signs he won't disclose it, perhaps when he's done he'll share, he has a photographic memory, no need to hold onto books; once read they become a part of his lived experience. They're not forgotten. He'll ask him again when next he comes, there is room for some curiosity here...
The books, wrapped and placed in a paper bag, and he is off.
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Words, by their nature airy things
only the breath that speaks them aloud can bring
to the ear that bends and gives them weight
the texture and colors that form their taste;
the shape of words rolled from the tongue
their flavor, words that slip, pop, burst, prickle and grate -
sweet words whispered, or more direct,
must first perambulate to find their place
in the hearts and minds of those who'd listen
Written down, now measure their length
by paragraph and verse,
dull chapters ink and text while
volumnious in strength,
aggregate their smell in books
to hints of plum, vanilla, decay.
Speak them aloud to delight again, to share, refresh and reverberate -
inspire or animate a poem or play, for if called to action, their
charm can yet create...
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Epeolatry: n. - the worship of words
Magnality: n. - a great or wonderful thing; a marvel
Mirabilia: n. pl. - objects or events that inspire wonder
Credenda: n. pl. - things to be believed, objects of faith
Amorphotae: n. pl. - those stars that lie outside the constellations
Kilig: adj. - exhilarated by an exciting or romantic experience
Serein: n. - the supposed fall of dew from a clear sky just after sunset. : mist or fine rain falling from an apparently clear sky.
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- Category: Love