I have a stabbing inherent fear that books, like many of its authors, shall one day become extinct. This revelation came to me because I was forced to purchase a tape cassette recorder to listen to a tape, and as I held it in my hand found myself thinking:
I cannot believe I found one to buy.
Thank goodness for eBay. Garage sales. Used bookstores.
Bookstores.
You must take pride in the owner of a bookstore. A secret society where members travel, perusing olde wooden shelving like mad Norseman, pillaging layers of books, bindings, blowing cobwebs from dust covers uncovering a treasure or two.
A book is the fruit of self. Knowledge unsurpassed. Everything I have learned has come directly from books. Let me correct myself: books and the street.
When entering a bookstore, I bypass the front tables streamed with discounts and deals. New authors with their third book published about the exact same things they said in the first. I head straight to the back, where the literature is hiding. You can always tell they attempt to hide it.
Try and ask someone working there exactly WHERE the LIT section is and they point you towards . . . someplace over . . . there.
In reality, they have no idea what Literature is.
*sigh*
Poetry is the second place I visit. Then onto biographies, music, art, photography and lastly, the horribly sad cart where tattered books lie that nobody wants. The cart of misfits. It is upon this cart, I always find a volume I want. Maybe that is because I, myself, am a misfit and that's okay. I like being different. It is who I am.
Sitting here now I am surrounded by books books books, how I adore them so. They are best friends to me. Run your hands up the spine of a book, it is life itself breathing inside waiting for your eyes only to discover an entirely new world created by another’s psyche.
How truly fascinating.
An old book holds something entirely different. They are my favorites to own. I often wonder what hands had passed these pages? How many people cried, felt happiness, pain, grief, love, and enlightenment from handling this book now in my possession?
The corners are tattered a bit, sure, but this gives it persona. Tells you it doesn't fuck around, man and it is meant to BE read because it has BEEN read. Now it's your turn to ride that steep climb up the first hill of a coaster.
Get ready . . . the turn is coming; you can feel it now, can't you? The existential drop of your belly as you lift slightly from your seat and remain airborne for a millisecond that lasts a lifetime just to be dropped straight downhill into an Inferno that brings you around dark corners, through forests, screaming wild and flipping pages as night turns into day.
This just caused me to think of not only the books, but also the writers of such books. Where have they all gone? Why is it that they are noticed after their death? After a complete and utter living hell interspersed with momentary lapses of euphoric bliss?
Ahh . . . but not in the pages. Within the pages, they survive. This is their gift, the gift of any writer to the reader. Regeneration by pure esoteric thought.
I think of Hemingway, poor Papa. No longer could he write, he could not think after they strapped his brilliance to the electro shocks and stripped him of his gift. It is no wonder he took one of his prized shotguns, purchased at Abercrombie and Fitch. It used to be a sporting goods store.
Kerouac. Oh, how I want to lay his wearied brow in my lap. The thing with Jack is that he saw so much fucking beauty, traveled so far, so young, ran with bums, slept in alleys, walked in below freezing temperatures in order to FEEL life beat in his veins as his own blood. Jack set out what he meant to do. Jack had a purpose and when it was met he was done. Tired. Down.
Jack was beat.
I could sit here with you for hours speaking of writers gone home. I wish I could but fear boring you right out of your mind.
Besides, you really should be reading something of worth.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti must be lonely.
"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars . . ."
— Jack Kerouac On The Road
© Susan Marie
