BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS
Today I went into the laundry room where there are milk boxes full of photography books balanced five high on top of each other. I culled out magazines and damaged books and filled three boxes with thick photography books to take to Jamie the seller of used books in a large book store in the Mason’s building in Marshall. On the top floor is the secret chamber of the Masons with all kinds of elaborate decorations. On the second floor are a number of small rooms rented to artists where Susie has her studio. On the bottom floor is Jamie’s used bookstore. As I had already guessed, a second hand bookstore, like everything else now is computerized. On his iPhone Jamie can look up to see what any book is offered for on eBay or on Amazon and also for the lowest price that each one has sold on line. He then can guess about how much a book will sell for and offer them himself for sale on line. His bookstore is in little Marshall, but it is also a world book store offering books world wide. The post office is just across the street so it is easy to box up books and mail them out. But he only feels it is worth while to sell a book on line if it sells for $18 or more. So he will tell me in a few days what my three boxes of books might sell for and whether he wants to deal with me.
Jamie is very pleasant and always smiling. But the experience of boxing up three milk cartons of books saddened me almost to the point of depression.
These were books that, when I found them, I couldn’t resist. I had to buy them and wanted to leaf through them slowly, savoring them. But instead I let them pile up beside me three feet high and when there were too many beside me I put them into milk cartons to look at later. I never did. Instead the milk cartons got stacked in front of bookshelves of books in the laundry room and the carport.
That is what saddened me. I discovered the books with such joy, looked forward to looking at them and then failed, again and again. So when I looked down at the spines of the books in the three milk cartons, the books looked back at me reproachfully. I had failed, again and again, to delight in them. There were at least 60 failures looking up at me. And now I don’t know whether I will be able to transfer them to someone who will finally look at and enjoy them or not. And these are only three boxes, I have another twenty or thirty to go and the sadness will only deepen.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 