touching and sad, the notes left behind

in my on-going searches I find notes, love letters, cards left behind as bookmarks. Or simply forgotten in books that the owner no longer valued Or the owner died, or divorced, moved away to another city; whatever. It's sad to see professions of love discarded in this way. Books offered with high regard to people who will abandon them in the future. Inscriptions, some by the authors of the books themselves, of heartfelt devotion now tossed aside; purged, removed.

this is a part of booking that affects me the most. I sometimes end my day just looking at my sleeping wife, wondering if there will come a time all my notes in all the books I have given her will be likewise recycled without even a glance over her shoulder.

(untitled entry)

I have been over to Mary's house. It was a weird experience to say the least. She has NO books in her house! A dictionary, okay - it's really good old English dictionary on Indian paper. That and a bible. She says that she purged all the books out of her house after her husband died. She said that she handles so many books at the library that she doesn't need to see them around her house. I don't know if she's grieving or crazy. I couldn't live in a house this book-depleted. I need them around. I need to hear them breathe.

soft porn is corrupting my shelves

I have to find another place; the storage unit in Maryland, yeah that will work. Can't afford to have the kids stumble on these. I thought I had a buyer but haven't heard from him in a few weeks now. The kids are extremely curious, I can't bring anything into the house without them (and then my wife) going through the books. Discretion is the better part of keeping my skin.

I suppose it's okay. I am on the "up-and-up". I was at the library tonight and talked to this woman I know there. Circulation manager, in fact, but also a young widow. Her husband had been killed in the invasion of Afghanistan in 2002. I have sympathy for her but I was and am opposed to wars started by the Bush/Cheney Police state. They didn't just invade two countries halfway around the world, they went on the offensive against our own Constitutional rights. Christ! The Patriot act? The "reduce our freedoms in our own defense" act - I talk sometimes with Mary, Mary Adams Stark is her name; this librarian lady. Her husband was a career solider. The Adams in her name is from Henry Adams, she says, she's related to John Adams (ever so distantly)

I discovered a copy of this photo that someone was using as a bookmark; there was a website written on the back in pencil. I haven't gone to the site, what if it's porn? It's so weird what I find inside of books. Photos like this are the tip of the iceberg, that's for sure. Sometimes I think it all means something and other times, I believe in complete fucking randomness of the universe. It does remind me of a book that came out recently - Forgotten Bookmarks - which I found to be extremely curious. Some relationships between bookmarks and the books they are in actually make sense. Uncanny, actually. Bizarre. Shit, I don't remember where I found this photo. Sometimes, when I am at the library especially, I just flip through books to get any bookmarks or papers out of them. I put up the donated books "clean" in a way. Nothing from previous owner except if they sign the book is left IN the book. Each book starts a new journey from the sales shelves out.

delicate balance (someone else's)

I can identify, really. I was volunteering at the library tonight and I was going through boxes of donated books, several boxes from the same owner/former owner of them. It could have been his entire library. I don't know.

What I do know is that he must have been walking a delicate balance between his obsessions and his faith. I found as many risque books as Christian books. Maybe they were on separate shelves. I found a HB copy of Justine by de Sade, a Grove Press oversized book of - well, soft porn entitled Eros in La Belle Epoque, a paperback copy of Adventures of Fanny Hill published in Paris, and a "privately published" book called Grushenka:Three Times a Woman. Holloway House Publishing, Los Angeles. Does anything say sleazy better than that?

There were also boxes filled with mysteries and books about boats and Boston Harbor and shipwrecks. Odd combination of things. I wonder how this dude's mind worked.

in underneath

Some places I am "in" already, like the library. Although I don't feel all that special, I seem to be one of the Friends of the library who actually shows up. I spend about a hour there putting books out onto the shelves and rooting through new donations for my own pursuits - my own unpolished gems - and occasionally finding something of real value. A Ray Bradbury or Stephen King chapbook.

Then I lug some of my lesser finds to Bennies or someplace where the young idiot clerks who don't know shit from shiola do just that - they take the shit and give me almost shiola in store credit. So, almost in revenge, I look for something that is completely underpriced and I know will sell for double or triple what they are asking, and I get it for my meager store credit and go from there. Or I get in store credit books that I know another bookstore owner across town would die to have. Hey, it's a gift (learned art).

My wife had to fly out of town for work. I don't ask much since I can't. All I know is that she'll be back tomorrow but instead of taking her overnight bag, she takes my orange backpack. I decided to carry some books out into the world in a grocery bag. Slightly inconvenient but not a problem.

I never sell enough. I always get more than I sell. The buy public is nervous about the economy or fickle or have behaved like lemmings and jumped over the cliff into e-books. Maybe a combination of these insanities.

There's the reality show that's on these days called Storage Wars and it's about this small group of parasites that buy the contents of storage lockers whose rent has gone south. The storage unit company hires these auctioneers who auction off the contents of these storage units to these low lifes who, at least in the TV show, are little more than hucksters. They own second hand stores or are collectors - doesn't matter. To me, it glorified theft. They are bidding on someone else's property. Yeah, okay, left behind property, "not up to date on the rent" property. To me, it feels scummy. It's like Antiques Roadshow for hucksters and "out-for-a buck" moles. I have little respect for anyone on the show or who made the show. Then, the topper, was when in two consecutive episodes of the show, one of these "experts" bemoan the fact that the storage unit they won (stole) had books in it. Of course, to them, books are useless nothings. At that point I turned off the TV and won't watch another second of that filth. They are all ignorant dirtbags.

nobody knows everything about everything

I got that thought, loud and clear, while reading John Baxter's A Pound of Paper and it's incredibly true. A lot of places I visit to get books have a blanket "50 cents for paperbacks, a buck for hardbounds" rule. But the used bookstores are another thing. The owners pride themselves on their knowledge of this-or-that writer, edition, publisher : whatever. But they don't know everything about everything and it's really surprising how little they know in my area about Hunter S. Thompson for example.

I went to Bennies and was really pissed when they only took my Orwells, but I found a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas there for $3.50 and it was a 1971 Popular Library edition. Hell, I instantly recognized a possibility there and took it for store credit. Of course store credit means that I took to Bennies dozens more books, some I actually paid real money for, and they "gave" me credit and I had enough credit to get this book as well as two others. But I really wanted the HST and once I got home posted it online for $3.85 (to prove a point to myself, I guess) and it sold for $21.50 (proving a point for myself, I guess)

Yes! A slightly bigger student loan payment this month. I can almost feel the interest falling!

who reads George Orwell?

Orwell wrote only 9 books. Most Americans are familiar with possibly two; 1984 and Animal Farm. He had others although the disinterest in them is palpable. I had two like new copies of his books Homage to Catalonia and The Road to Wigan Pier and I couldn't get a nibble. Finally, I took them along with a dozen other "orphans" to Bennie's and they ONLY took the Orwell. Because he's Orwell. But his writing style - is his. I mean, not everyone, myself included, like the way he writes. He's very morbid. The life he chose played out in his work. One can almost feel his exhaustion. And that isn't even his real name, I mean, he is as much a fictitious character as any he writes about!

Anyway, I got A Writer's Diary by Virginia Woolf and The Saddest Story: A Biography of Ford Madox Ford by Arthur Mizener, who seems to have had a cottage industry of biography writing as I think of it. He wrote a number of them. I don't know a whole lot about Ford. I read The Good Soldier and liked it okay. "okay", sheesh, I sound like Holden Caulfield. Next I will be saying "phonies" or something. Somewhere I have another book by Ford, a book of non-fiction actually. The March of Literature published by the Dial Press in 1938. Ford died in 1939. Was the book panned, is that why a 1971 biography of him not even mention the work?

The strands are too numerous. I get so sidetracked that I lose my place, or my head; both. So, yes, Orwell, I won't try and collect him. Joseph Conrad, yes, and THERE there is a tie in to this whole posting. Conrad and Ford collaborated on at least two novels!