I love the night. Time stands still in the dark. When awake in the hours before dawn, I wish the sun would not rise. The day has morning, midday, afternoon, evening… The night is unchanging. One hour looks like another. There is no movement outside. Or if there is, it is invisible. Seldom any sound. The moon interferes on occasion, but its appearances are “unpredictable” without a scorecard. I can’t keep up with its movements and varying stages of brightness. It is near full right now. The “Cold Moon” is below the horizon and won’t come up til after sunrise.
I could create a night room and embrace the dark any time I wish, but once the day has come, I begin itching to rise. And up here, there is birdsong awakening me with the first light.
Yes, the darkness means comfort and warmth. Bundled under bedclothes and cuddled in my nest of pillows. I can read or write by reaching up behind me and touching the gooseneck lamp clipped to my headboard. (The new one has no “switch” just a spot you brush with a fingertip, and the thing goes on or off.)
Yes, dawn often comes too fast. Especially in recent years, for some reason.
Perhaps it is the timelessness of the dark.
I am free to do what I like in the night. The days have many obligations.
It is Friday the 13th. Winter has returned. It is 25 degrees. When I got home last night, black soil in the renovated bed had not frozen. I went out in the dark to push as many daffodil bulbs in as would fit.
There are a couple piles of composted manure around. The truck was backed to one, and I shoveled the stuff into two big plastic tubs. I’ll spread that over the exposed bulbs this morning. My right hand still hurts from the Dutch accident. I think because I’ve never really stopped using it to let it heal. It was my left arm that took most of the impact and had the surgery.
There are still a lot of bulbs to plant. I hope the ground thaws next week so I can finish.
This year has been interrupted many times.
Long COVID from Christmas 2023 into spring. The lingering cough virus that I suspected was COVID upon returning from Scandinavia in mid summer. Then the dustup in Amsterdam in October which has lingered til even now a bit.
The week was wonderful and terrible.
A new grandchild arrived a little early.
Health stuff… I have these dire conditions but no symptoms. One flared with frightening numbers. A doom scenario. Maybe the retest will be better.
I’ve come home each night and made something for dinner. Nothing special. Comfort food.
There is no desire to go out and meet anyone.
Just home. And work.
The longest night of the year is just a week off. Christmas follows soon after. New Year’s… has no significance any more. Then the long spell of winter.
I am not up for any of it.
Monday, December 9
Me and three dogs curled up in bed. Pip returned last night from a week away. He is a lover. Pressed firmly against my hip as if that is the best spot in the world.
The cold snap finally broke. Sunday, it got to the low 50s. Today through Wednesday will also be nice. I’ll be able to finally empty the bags of unfrozen soil and plant bulbs. At least some of them.
I’m out of birdseed, but after I shower, I’ll go down and put suet in the feeders hung on a chain strung between trees in front. I can observe the birds from the bay window. The bears are certainly in hibernation now, so they won’t tear down the bird feeders. I’ll buy a 50-pound bag of sunflower seed today.
I can let the woodstove burn out today. But I will need to get another fire going this evening. The low will be in the 40s.
It was another full weekend of book sorting at the Wonder Book warehouse.
I still didn’t get to all the carts that have my name on them. It is “fun” despite the labor and stress. So many exciting finds and surprises.
A group of Sing Out! periodicals came in. This 1960 issue with Bob Dylan on the cover is a bit iconic.
Our push to get more books sorted has resulted in an impending shortage of “raw” books. It happens around this time each year, but in 2024, it is getting more severe than any time since the dark days of COVID when the stores were closed and we couldn’t travel for books.
What to do?
I’m reaching out to sources asking for books.
I know we have a problem when I can start seeing the walls.
My third grandchild was born early Tuesday morning. Pretty exciting!
Me. I’m pretty terrified. What you don’t know can’t hurt. But what you do know can kill you?
Ernest is driving us to the Frederick store. We have a small Books by the Foot order to pull. Mostly, I want to see the place. November was so strong there. And at the other stores as well.
I can’t express enough joy that bookstores are relevant again. Like so many other things people said, we were doomed not that many years ago.
It looks great. Full of color and festive stuff.
It is raining hard out in the black forest morning. I’d left my laptop out in the truck, and when I awoke at 5:30, I decided to go out and fetch it. When I came back in, Giles was standing by the door. I let him out, and he took a couple of steps on the porch, heard rain, sniffed the air and turned around to come back in.
I emptied the second dozen bags of soil last evening in the dark.
They’d finally defrosted.
The plan was to rake it smooth and plant a lot of bulbs in it this morning. The rain dampens my enthusiasm for this, but the forecast is for a change tonight to a hard freeze. So I may be planting in the rain in an hour or so. It is 56 out, so it won’t be too cold. Just wet and muddy.
Giles is curled up next to me. I reach over occasionally and give his sleeping body a pat or tummy rub. He doesn’t wake but will lift his leg to give me better access. His body is warm and his fur soft.
It is 7 a.m. My phone awakens then, and the screen brightens. “Good Morning.”
I scrolled through news sites. Mostly a waste of time that I often regret as the clock rolls forward.
Rocky Colavito died at 91. The Amazing Kreskin. Michael Cole (of The Mod Squad.)
Colavito was an early baseball hero of mine. I think he hit a lot of homers the year I became cognizant of the sport. I’m sure I cut his baseball card from the back of a cereal box back then.
He played for the Cleveland Indians (now the Guardians.) Cleveland was the closest team to my home in Amherst (Buffalo), New York. I always wanted my dad to drive me down there to see a game. I guess it was too far a stretch.
So, yesterday was the first day of life for my grandson.
And, for me, a first day of sorts. But not with such a limitless horizon.
All you can do is put one foot in front of the other and move forward.
That’s a sunset on the mountain behind the house. It looks like some magical being could walk out of it. Or, perhaps, I could walk into it to eternity.
The sun rose at 7:20. The world just brightened a little, but it is still gray and dismal. The crepuscular time when many wild animals begin moving. It is also the time when hunters tend to have their best luck. Human hunters and animal predators. The birds begin flocking to the window feeders attached to the bay window by suction cups. Currently, it is mostly titmice, chickadees and nuthatches. An occasional downy woodpecker zooms in and takes a seed to a nearby branch to tap it open. Or is it a hairy woodpecker? They look so much alike. I need to get the book out to clarify which it is.
I won’t mess with the planting this morning. I think it would all just turn to mud and become impossible.
I need to get up, shower, get the dogs set and go to work.
Another day of books.
There are 7 more carts of German books that I accepted reluctantly. I was emailed by a woman who explained she had her grandmother’s books in a storage locker and wanted them to get a good result. 30 boxes. She didn’t want anything for them, but still I would have to pay Larry for the pickup. He doesn’t work for free. Then a kid was paid to cart them up. He took over two hours for some reason on Saturday. That adds $40 plus in payroll. I looked at them and groaned.
“Why did I say yes?”
“It’s what you do,” the book muse’s voice inside my head reminded me.
(She “appeared” in many early blogs. Nothing lately. Either she tired of me or feels I graduated.
I think she still watches over me sometimes.)
I could go through a hundred carts of English books in the amount of time it takes to do these. And likely none will sell.
When I gave them a glance at Dock 2 Sunday, my expectations were met, if not lowered.
“Can we sell German leather sets on Books by the Foot?”
Many designers refuse foreign language books. They don’t understand their titles, much less their contents, and their clients don’t either. Plus, they look “foreign.”
I asked Jessica on Monday and was told, “Sometimes.” At a lower price.
So, I had the 8 carts pushed up to Books by the Foot. (More handling.)
That afternoon, desperately worried about other things, I forced myself to go through one. I was pleasantly surprised that it contained some authors who are still viable.
James Joyce? “Auf Deutsch”? Vintage editions, but not firsts and no jackets and pretty worn.
I started putting the titles that might be viable on an empty cart.
Herman Hesse. About 10. All later printings.
Knut Hamsun. He sells occasionally online. Occasionally.
But most of these books are in the old German schrift font.
Often a bit hard to decipher…
A number of Märchen titles. Folk and fairy tales. But most are in tatters. A disbound Der Struwwelpeter. Would the images sell if we put them in bags and hung them up?
I put those on the cart as well.
Then I opened a tall thin untitled volume that gave me tingles.
Hand colored.
But I’ve been through this before.
Beautiful but unsellable. Actually more unmarketable than unsellable.
Years ago, we picked up the leftovers from Drusilla’s home. She was in a nursing home, and her niece was clearing out her home. She’d closed her venerable Baltimore store years before, and all her books went home. There’d been a tag sale before I was contacted to come get the leftovers. I sent some of the most beautiful German titles and bindings to Helen Younger, who told me she couldn’t do anything with them, and they were returned. Helen was perhaps the top rare children’s book expert around.
Sigh…
I sent the Hesse and Joyce to the Gaithersburg store with instructions to put them up front on display. They’ll fill a spot something much more viable would occupy. But maybe that one in a million customer will walk in, and they can’t miss them just inside the door.
(They could be yours…)
The Knut Hamsun I’ll force online. The poor data entry employee—an advanced one to be able to add this kind of material—will groan at the onerous task. But maybe…
“BOOM! BOOM!”
Last Saturday’s crepuscular sounds penetrated my bedroom windows. My neighbor lets hunters come up, and they use a spot along our shared property line. There’s a trail that deer use to get to the pond at the foot of the mountain. Likely they got their buck. The deer are so overpopulated in the Middle Atlantic. They’ve changed ecosystems—devouring all the undergrowth in forests so forest floors are barren but for toxic things they can’t eat—like ferns.
It is Thursday morning. 6 a.m. in the dark and silence. The cold has returned. 32 outside, and it will only get to 37 today and tomorrow and tomorrow…
Because it has been so warm I didn’t build a good fire before going to bed, and I’m paying for it now with a chilly morning outside the warmth of my bed.
I’ll see what kind of shape the garden is in and if I can get some of the bulbs planted. It may just be a muddy mess to walk in there.
It has been a messy week at work as well. Things just aren’t falling into place. I should be thrilled. Overall, the company is doing so well—on all fronts. I should dwell on THAT! Pointless distractions and meetings going to nowhere. Time spent where my talents don’t lie. I should be working on books and writing stories.
And then there is the fear. Food doesn’t taste good. My mind has been on two planes for a couple of months now. My body keeps getting hit—not just like that electric bike in Amsterdam—but with news that brings me closer to endings. I feel fine. It is the tests and their results that have a leitmotif of worry playing along in my everyday life.
Just put one foot in front of the other until you can’t any longer.
On the other plane, my mind is about work and chores and things I need to do at home and at the stores.
I don’t want to go out. I don’t want to travel. I just want to go home and fix a meal and watch a movie or something. If there’s enough energy, I’ll read before falling asleep.
Repeat.
Last night, I cheated and picked up a roasted chicken from Costco. I needed some supplies and also bought some things for the employees to snack on. It was only $4.99 for a whole chicken. Still warm by the time I got home, I stuck it in the oven anyway. I cut up a head of romaine and poured picante sauce over it. About a third of the chicken was cut away with scissors. Ground pepper and a few dashes of Melinda’s Black Truffle Hot Sauce. Then I went in with the two plates to watch The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.
It was excellent. Not nearly as cartoonish as I recall, and it tied in elements of The Lord of the Rings to which The Hobbit is a sort of prequel.
I looked at the German books briefly yesterday. There wasn’t time with all the distractions to go through a cart. A big ugly tome caught my eye.
‘Something dreary,’ I thought.
But what was ugly was the thick paper dust jacket. When I carefully took it off…
Beauty.
These sorts of things are almost always beaten broken stained…
This time traveler struck my heart.
Goethe’s Faust. Making a pact with the devil…
Just think of the binding and tooling labor that went into this.
How to market it? It would just be another Faust on the website. Like the other German books, MAYBE someone would stumble upon it.
We could showcase in The Boutique.
That’s where we market beautiful or unusual bindings and use photos to convey their charms. It is one of the few areas where www.wonderbook.com crosses over with www.booksbythefoot.com.
Offering “Books for their Looks.”
(The Boutique might offer some unique gift ideas this time of year…)
I’ve been searching for sources of bulk books this week. Something to shore up our dwindling stock. Most charities sell these by the pound to bulk sellers—automated mega-sellers who use conveyor belts and scanners to sort the team from… the rest.
It is always something. I had to rush to the bank late yesterday afternoon. Amazon payments didn’t drop in, and we risked running short in that account for our huge payroll. It was the last thing I wanted to do after a week of dreary things. The bank clerk said it might take two days to transfer the money even though both accounts are with the same bank?
Dreary.
Always some emergency. Or some “people problem” that reaches my level to address.
Sigh…
That stuff “goes with the territory.”
Next Thursday, the Wonder Book sponsored movie at the Weinberg classic theater will be The NeverEnding Story.
I hope I’m in the mood to go see it.
And here’s the newest Wonder Book newsletter. You can subscribe to it here. We don’t send many, and it is easy to unsubscribe with one click. You will receive early notifications of store and online sales as well as this blog every Saturday.
Things To Do Before I Leave
The fire is warm tonight.
The clock moves its digits toward dawn
My eyelids stick together a bit
They are reluctant to open
I am tired and should sleep some more
but niggling thoughts pry me awake
There is unfinished business
Everywhere in my life loose ends
A couple tears squeeze out
Tears of tiredness
Or tears of sadness
My body jolts!
an electric shock flashes through it
Then all subsides
I roll on my side
close my eyes
and return to that other world
There senselessness makes sense
The serpents sleep beneath the earth in winter
My poison is self concocted
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