It sounded like a wild mob was stoning our house last night. The metal roof was deflecting stone after stone of hail. And the wind. My god, the wind! Everything looked alright this morning until we looked out the window to the backyard. And then we saw...the branch. It looked to be devouring our picnic table.
There's been much improvement for our girl, Espie. She's still under the weather but not painful like she was Saturday night and into Sunday morning. I'm distracted thinking about her and I'm glad she's home. She'll go to work with me today and get more fluids.
I work just 3 days this week. And it's strange because I just posted about how I used to have every Tuesday off last year and then we got short-staffed. Well lo and behold, we're on track again and for the first time in a long time I am scheduled with Monday and Tuesday off. Oh the things I'll do! I have high hopes. And this weekend is the Monster Book Sale here in Austin. I fantasize about doing a serious plundering and coming home with armloads of books. I always find the goods at the Monster sale.
One day I'll hit my stride with the reselling. The easy answer is to why it isn't more profitable at this point is that I have a woeful lack of inventory to offer but the truth is that I am not the best at time management and I don't push myself. I think it would help immensely if I made goals or quotas for myself. My dearest M. has been talking about building a wall of shelves, just shelves from top to bottom. We have simple dreams people. Simple dreams.
Purging books from my inventory is a thankless task. As most readers know, I have a very small inventory as it is so to subtract books always fills me with some doubt. What if I purge this tonight when someone was planning on buying it tomorrow? Well, after several years of sitting silently on a shelf I do have some reason to believe that the chosen few will remain unsold. I pick and choose and pull and donate. I've learned not to donate to the places that I buy from because there is nothing like recognizing your old discards while bookscouting and again being inexplicably drawn in. So I pack them up and drive them to the dark edge of town as if I am callously relocating an undesirable cat and with a thud, they hit the bottom of a rusted out donation bin.
On my list tonight was American Stories: Fiction From The Atlantic Monthly. I looked it over, it's in great shape. I page through. This is simply a great collection of short stories. There are contributions by T. C. Boyle, Charles Baxter, Raymond Carver, Joseph Heller, Flannery O'Connor, Louise Erdrich and so many more. I want to keep it for myself but I confess, I just bought 2 new books over the weekend. I have a stack that is way out of control as it is. And it comes down to this: I can't. I simply cannot donate this one. I save you from the rusty bin, American Stories! Be free!
The girl's sick. Esperanza, that is. I gave all the dogs a smoked beef knuckle for a treat and even though she's had this very same delectable in the past, she did not tolerate it well this time. She came up with acute abdominal pain, lethargy, lack of appetite. She cried through the night and first thing Sunday morning I had her at the vet office.
She had some IV meds, a little banamine for pain, some antibiotic. Even after that she could hardly walk. I could tell her gut hurt. The last few days have been devoted to caring for her and working myself up into a neurotic frenzy of paranoia. Could it be cancer? Meningitis? Her back? I was reluctant to believe it was just a stomach ache. I don't know what else it could be though. Any other guess on my part makes me look like just another common crazy suspecting the Chinese of conspiring against American dog owners. Texans, I have found, will always have time to blame the Chinese for all the ills of the world. Send the FLDS children back to their nest of incest (because they should not be removed from the ranch in the first place) and blame the Chinese for everything.
Fatigue and worry have me feeling a little disheartened. I want things to be drastically different right now and I don't even know how.
My work schedule today, as it is every Tuesday, is ridiculous - 2pm to 6pm. It's right in the middle of the day and gets in the way of everything else I need to do. I used to have Tuesday off and would love to have to myself again. But as it is, I have to go so I can close up. It's making me crazy though. All I can think about is how much of an inconvenience this is and I could be working at home.
I have to run up to the box store today and I have to get to the post office. Both are time consuming. I am trying to go through all of my books and make sure they are listed and at the same time I am getting rid of 'deadwood'. There is a ever-growing donation pile growing in my kitchen.
Dogs need to be fed, mother's day cards need to be signed and sent, cat box needs to be cleaned. I need to be cleaned. There is no time for reading or writing at times like this. I remember when I couldn't wait to move out of my Mom's house and be on my own. Be careful what you wish for. Right now, I'm up to my neck in wishes.
We've been hitting more booksales over the past several weeks. Last month we went to three right outside of Austin - 2 in San Antonio and 1 in San Marcos. All were dismal and hardly worth the trip. But this weekend we went to a sale in a small town called Wimberely. The Wimberely sale was wonderful. For one, the trip out there was so pleasant. We didn't travel on Interstate 35 so that right there is a plus. And once there, the volunteers could not have been nicer.
I found plenty of books (about 25). The pricing was very straightforward, they were well organized and it wasn't over run with booksellers. Although I'm sure there had to be a few, I couldn't detect any during my visit. The one and only drawback was the number of books that had a very heavy tobacco odor. I came home with 2 and have had to keep them separated from the rest of my books. One I bought for myself. It's called the Slang of Sin. I can't really take the smell though so I will donate it. The other isn't too bad. I've had it outside and opened to different pages so it can air out. But I bring this up because I had to pass over so many books. I don't want to send out books in this condition to customers. But after all is said and done, the Wimberely sale was very good. We'll be going back in October.
Even with all of the used book sales that I go to , I can still find books to buy at BookPeople here in town. Last week I came home with a book by Michael Dirda called Book By Book. It is very much a 'commonplace book' with lots of short thoughts on a variety of book related topics from different sources. In fact, if I am remebering correctly, Dirda says early on that much of this book was taken from his very own commonplace book. Here then, are a few excerpts:
"Remember that every life is a special problem, which is not yours but another's; and content yourself with the terrible algebra of your own." - Henry James
"What others criticize you for, cultivate: It is you" - Jean Cocteau
"Where is your Self to be found? Always in the deepest enchantment that you have experienced." - Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
"
From the Harry Ransom Center handout, "Stops along the Road: Selected points of interest in the scroll manuscript of On The Road"...
8. The scroll's exact length is 119 feet, 8 inches. The very end of the scroll is a ragged edge, and the final section of text is missing. In Kerouac's handwriting near the edge is written, "DOG ATE (Potchky - a dog)." Potchky was Kerouac's friend Lucien Carr's cocker spaniel. Regardless of what Potchky ingested, the scroll would perhaps still have lacked an ending. In a May 1951 letter on display in the On The Road section of this exhibition, Giinsberg writes to Neal Cassady that Kerouac has finished his draft: "the hero is you, you are the hero, with appearance on scene 1946. Jack needs however an ending.
Happy birthday to me!!! It's only 12:30 and have had such a grand, grand day. Now, of to the Harry Ransom Center to see the Jack Kerouac scroll, then a Texas BBQ lunch and we can only guess what will happen after that.
In honor of ME, here is a birthday poem by e. e. cummings from cummings 95 poems published by HBJ.
your birthday comes to tell me this
-each luckiest of lucky days
i've loved,shall love,do love you,was
and will be and my birthday is
So busy doing all the little things that I ordinarily would put off until another day - cleaning and errands. We are having company coming to visit us from Pittsburgh. We told him to bring shorts! It will be much warmer here than at home.
I don't want to neglect my poems though as it is the last week of National Poetry Month. I received a new book in the mail so I will chooose from it. North Of The Cities by Louis Jenkins. The poem is called Nonfiction and I had to post it partly because I heard that Pres. Bush was on Deal or No Deal. Is that even true? It couldn't be weirder. So I will post that and then package up the 11 books that I sold recently and get them out. Bookselling has been very, very good to me. Forgive me Mr. Sosa.
NONFICTION
I don't like it when someone else's fantasy world
interferes with my own. That's why I don't read
novels much anymore or watch television. I don't go
for nonfiction either. Fiction and nonfiction aren't
opposites. It isn't truth vs. lies. Nonfiction is simply
not fiction - it's something else, I don't know what.
Take the president, for example, from what I've read
in the newspapers, (which, as I am led to believe, are
nonfiction,) can't be real. He has to be made up by some
really bad writer. Unless I imagined all that stuff.
by Louis Jenkins
My parents aging may be their saving grace. While my dad's mind may take a leave of absence from time to time, my mother has always been "with it". She watches the news and sports and has a good memory and does alright for herself for the most part. She lives alone. She's creeping up on 80.
I phoned her tonight and the woman made me laugh until I cried. We were talking about current events and she tells me that the Pope is in the US. In fact, today is his birthday. After a brief rundown of his itinerary she follows up with this little known fact, 'That Pope's an actor". I quickly try to process this. I think to myself, she means figuratively right? But I ask, "What do you mean?" She just sticks to her guns and says again that he's an actor. With a little hesitation I ask, "Are you going to tell me a joke?" because she likes to tell jokes, and here, in this moment, she is playing the straight man oh so well but she says, "No. No joke. He's an actor."
I can tell that she's being sincere so I desperately try to make sense of this simple statement. My mind is reaching for any tangential piece of information that could make this so. Let's see...German. Academic. Prolific author. Cardinal. Supreme Pontiff. No. Unable to process.
I cannot for the life of me hide my disbelief. I repeat, "Ratzinger? The Pope now? He's an actor?"
"Yeah. This one. Benedict"
"This Pope?" I want to make absolutely sure that I am hearing her right. But she is taken aback by what is clearly a huge busload of doubt careening at, dare I say, a very high rate of speed right toward her. So, being cautious, she steps aside. She pauses.
"Oh, no. No. Not this one, the last one. John."
Now I have to laugh outloud. I can't NOT laugh about this.
"JOHN???" Huge and multiple question mark sprout from the top of my head. I am now wearing a tiara of disbelief "The Polish Pope? The one who died?" I notice the volume in my voice has increased.
"Yeah," she says "He was an actor."
I try my best to rein it in a little, "Are you thinking of Ronald Reagan?" I know, I know. I can't believe we've pulled Ronnie from his grave to join this crazy little tea party but hey, the more the merrier.
"No, the John. The last Pope."
"You're telling me that Pope John was an actor? Like on TV or the movies or what?"
The word Broadway comes out of her mouth. It's such a hilarious and outrageous claim but she's so earnest and even sounds a little proud of herself for sharing this little known fact about Pope John Paul's thespian past. I say to her, between the laughing and crying, "Okay. You're telling me," and here I punctuate each facet of fact with a pause, "You're telling me. That the dead Polish Pope. Pope John. The one who died. Was an actor on Broadway?"
Here she does an interesting thing, she attempts The Complete Reversal. She says to me, like I'm completely out of my mind, "Not on Broadway. I didn't say on Broadway, I said 'like' Broadway."
Oh. Okay. Yeah because now it all makes so much sense. Then she adds, "Look it up on your internet. If you don't believe me, look it up."
