I became conscious before four. I think. It was dead silent. The air was still. Absolute blackness. Warm enough. Cool enough. Afloat on a cushion of cotton. In and out of dreams. Unsure which consciousness was real. Both were. In and out of dreams. A disembodied state. Awake asleep. Am I dreaming? I was. Now I am not.
The first real sound was my bare arm brushing the cotton pillow as I reached up and behind and touched the reading light clamped to the headboard. There’s no switch. You just brush the base, and it is on. I reached for my book. Opened it and traveled to London in the mid 1950s.
It is a John Dickson Carr locked-room mystery.
The story opens in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. I was there a couple of weeks ago. I visited the John Soane House, walked through the large park with its tennis and gardens and over to the Lincoln Inn. That complex is an old Inn of Court. The area is filled with barrister offices. I passed an ancient wig shop, a legal bookstore and an old cafe whose entrance door has gilded upon it “The Last Judgment” and the scales of justice.
Books take you places. You can travel through time as well. The protagonist is a barrister and within a few pages finds himself in a world of trouble.
The story takes me through familiar streets and sites. The Seven Dials, for instance. I experience the London Fog of the 1950s—likely smog caused by the coal fires which most homes used for heat (including the aforementioned law office at Lincoln’s Inn.)
The only London Fog I’ve experienced in person was my dad’s raincoat.
Reading that in the wee hour was another kind of dream. A little circle of light illuminating the book. Everything else black silence and cotton sheets and cotton covered pillows. Comfort reading in my place of greatest comfort.
Books are my friends as well as my means of support.
“I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things…”
― J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
That is how I’ll feel when I pick up the final book.
It is Friday.
As so often happens, the week got away from me. Pulled in directions I didn’t want to go. Pushed to do things I didn’t want to do.
I suppose it is the price you pay to do things you do want.
My friend Alan Robinson drove down from Massachusetts to visit last Friday. It was good to see him.
He brought down two portraits.
“Silver points,” he explained to me.
His main reason for coming was to meet a potential sponsor for some new artwork.
I was glad to help.
We had dinner at her wondrous restaurant—The 7th Sister. Things got a little mystical in that magical place. Spirit animals and such. The food and beverages were extraordinary.
On Saturday, they came to the warehouse. I pulled out some of Alan’s works so they could see what he does up close.
I think it went well.
On the way in that morning, I stopped at the farm co-op Southern States for some tomato and pepper plants. I’ve been too busy to plant them this week. Maybe today.
Or tomorrow.
It was after noon before the meeting ended. Alan hugged and thanked me and headed back home.
Then I could get to my work.
By Sunday evening, I had created a mountain of books.
There were so many boxes and tubs that I had to expand my work area. There were several other areas where I made piles and stacks. A lot of carts were processed to go up to Books by the Foot.
The carts filled for internet sales were pushed to the data entry area.
I was so exhausted I was shaking. Giles was ready to quit too.
As always, there were a lot of wonderful finds.
This little illuminated leaf isn’t worth a whole lot, but I’m a sucker for them. For a piece of paper (or vellum) to survive for six or seven centuries or more is astonishing.
After a week that was a whirlwind of houseguests and work and books, Sunday was a joy. I had the warehouse to myself! I could wrangle books all day alone. No rumbling carts breaking into my “zone.” No banging clanging pallet jacks to set my nerves on edge. You’d think I’d be used to the warehouse mechanicals. No. Almost every “SLAM” “BANG” “CRACK”… sneaks up on me from behind.
And no people to distract me or need me or ask for advice or ask to be excused for getting in my way.
Just me and thousands of books vying for my attention.
I got in about 8. Scruffy. No shower. There was no one to dress and groom for. (I need another haircut? Already? It keeps flopping in my eyes.)
It was such a relief after having two (brief) visits from houseguests. They were great, but I’m so unused to it that it took some relearning.
I guess I’ve gotten used to being alone after the last five years of plague and recovery.
These stories—400+ now—have often been created to convey any relationship with the printed word. This relationship has evolved over the decades to the point where there is no hope of catching up, getting ahead.
We just do what we can do.
Sunday was June 1st.
A beautiful cool morning. 49.
But June will bring summer temperatures. The rest of the week will be in the 80s.
Another season. Another measure of time passing.
Monday.
Bryan is driving us down to Gaithersburg.
Like an idiot, I left my coffee in the warehouse.
It is a stunning day.
Cool. Calm. Brilliant.
The world around here is bright green.
Things have slowed there a bit. We are waiting for more bookcases before we can do the next big changes.
Maybe I need to tweak my carpenter.
We did get the first new signs up.
That will help. A big problem with that store is its invisibility. It is in a courtyard behind and below the front row of restaurants and shops. You pretty much have to know it is there.
As usual, I wonder what I will find there.
The recent main mission has been to get the 20 or so large glass cases filled with collectible, beautiful or fragile books. When there are enough in them, we will begin to organize them by subject or author.
It was wonderful to have a day “off” on Sunday. Even though it was about 10 hours of standing and constant work, I felt no stress. At the end of the day, I felt exhaustion.
Just me and the books.
It has been a lifelong relationship. They’ve provided me with a livelihood. I’ve devoted decades of service to them.
Every book I handle gets an evaluation. Most I can give an instant judgment on. From there, I can send it off somewhere to get its best result. The small percentage I’m not sure what to do with will go to someone else here or get set aside.
Setting things aside… postponing the inevitable. Maybe not. Maybe I’ll never get to some things. More and more, I’m sending those things to the stores or putting them online and hoping they will find an audience.
Wednesday already. It will get up into the 80s today.
Tuesday was a series of meetings. One after another, until I couldn’t bear being there any longer. I fled to get my car washed. The old Jeep Cherokee—a 2015 workhorse I use almost exclusively to transport the dogs to the warehouse on weekends—had not been washed for at least a year. The car wash I use had been closed for renovations for months and months. The Jeep was covered with caked-on pollen forest debris. Inside, it was “furred” with tens of thousands of white dog hairs. I paid my fee and was directed onto a conveyor—”Neutral, No Brakes, No Steering!” the electric sign flashed. The conveyor takes you through a kind of amusement-park ride. There are flashing colored lights, streams of sprayed water inundating the vehicle, a rainbow of foam flows on and over you, then to flapping slapping ghostlike sheets of cloth that wipe the dirt off, another rinse by dozens of jets of high pressure water and then a final windstorm from both sides and above to dry the Jeep off.
I paid extra for the deluxe interior cleaning to see just how much dog hair they could get out. A half dozen small men descended on the car while I sat on a bench off to the side next to the building. When they were done, I was waved over. I pushed a few dollars into the tip box and went to my “dog car.”
It is beautiful. Looks new!
I’ll put cotton sheets in the back and cover the passenger seat with another and hope that mitigates future fur storms.
Since I was coming to the far west side of town, I’d scheduled a haircut. I was tired of it falling in my eyes. There was a little time to kill before my appointment, so I stopped into the nearby Frederick Wonder Book. It looks great.
We’d reviewed May’s sales that morning.
BOOM!
All three stores were up over May 2024!
The growth of all three stores since reopening after COVID is astonishing and gratifying. Maybe eventually they’ll start showing a profit.
I found my long-lost travel knapsack!
Hiding in plain sight.
Kinda.
It was in the SUV under a bunch of stuff I bought from my crazy nephew months ago.
He has found some great books and documents over the years. But he likes to supplement that with “things” when the books are “thin.” The kind of things I don’t know what to do with.
So, among other things, my knapsack was beneath a vintage Superman costume.
It comes with the warning that it doesn’t actually give you the ability to fly. I remember watching the Three Stooges as a child, and the host cautioned us that the Stooges were not using REAL hammers when they hit each other over the head.
There was also a ship’s wheel. A real one. It weighs about 50 pounds.
Maybe now I can stay on course.
My friend and mentor Ken Karmiole found a cool book.
I love Wordsworth even though he can be a little stuffy.
This comes with the added bonus of a fore edge painting.
Friday.
There was a family get together last night near the Mason Dixon Line.
The contractor came Thursday morning to install a new gate on the dog pen. Giles, the maniac, had pushed through the bottom of the chain-link fence, and it was irreparable. I had to take the dogs to work. There’s another big pen there. I left them there overnight with plenty of water and food.
That’s another reason things were so quiet here. No soft breathing or light snores or rising turning around and settling back down rustling from the beasts that share my bed.
The gardens are very lush on the mountain. It has been a cool wet spring.
The hostas have gotten huge.
I did some tree trimming with the pole trimmer to take down branches overshadowing things growing below.
There are dozens of baby trilliums in four or five beds. How gratifying. I need to thin things out around them and put some composted manure around them so they can flourish. I bet I’ll find more when I go looking.
Success!
The vast carpets of ferns in the forest all around the house are maturing. They are stunning.
I need to clear the ATV trail that goes around the property. I stopped using it when there was no one to give rides to during COVID. I know trees have fallen across the route.
I hope I get to it all.
If I do, I know myself well enough that I’ll just pile something else to do.
There are no comments to display.