5 posts tagged “books”
Some time ago, I wrote about a bookstore which housed a small, dainty cat. Her name was Zola, and she had that peculiar feline quality of making one ashamed in her presence.
Before being accepted into that literary haven, she had a hard life. Misuse and untended infections destroyed her teeth, and took away one of her golden eyes. Her remaining eye, though scarred, has still kept all of its facets: a yellow diamond embedded in a petite icon.
Her paws are like snowflakes: small and silent. Her voice is a little song: I can see notes and flats and sharps falling from her mouth each time she meows. Boyfriend and I hadn't seen her lately. But the last time we were at the bookstore, I quietly pointed out to him the warm, dappled rug curled on top of a pile of books, fast asleep.
Now, when asleep, most cats will dream of champagne-colored mice, spilling out of glasses, with infuriating whiskers and tails. They will dream of velvet pillows, smelling of feathers and sky, warming in the sun. They will dream of exploring fields of white flowers that nipped at their noses and drove their muscles into delight and madness.
But it is the special cat that will make a bed of books. She absorbs the visions and histories, adventures and tragedies, poems and meters that drive upward like roots from a fertile, creative ground. Languages that are not her own course through her and create new, purring dreams.
She might be stalking through jungles, drawn towards heartbeats hidden in the thick darkness. She could be on the seas, riding on the back of a whale - with every twist and turn thundering like an earthquake. Perhaps she will be in a Victorian alley - concealed by the smoke of nearby opium dens - watching a man in his parlor reading about murder and brandishing a syringe. Or maybe she would be lost on a battlefield, stepping over shredded flags, glancing distastefully at the stale, red pools, comforting the dying horses' white-eyed pain with her whiskers.
Or that lucky cat would feel its substance losing dimension, until it could walk through centuries of art. She would nibble at Dutch still lives: broad plates of tulips, bread and cheese. Her form might appear in a carved frieze of warriors and slaves, riding in a chariot. She would invade the portraits of women who hunted the courts with feral intensity. Resting by their petticoats, her tail would wrap around shoes painted with scenes of masquerades and banquets.
Before we left that day I saw that Zola was awake, and was yawning luxuriously. Whatever story she had chosen (or had chosen her), it must have been a very fine and lengthy journey.
One evening, feeling oddly energetic, I thought I would wade through my book collection - intending to dip my hands into the glinting river of words and photographs, to lift each book up and then tell it to its face whether it could stay or not.
A hard job, but a necessary one. It had reached a point when I would have to use a blasting compound (oh, how the neighbors would fuss) to mine the desired book. And of course, if any room was freed up, it meant that I was now able to buy more. A Catch Twenty-Who Cares situation, actually.
In the course of my burrowing I extracted, delicately and with a dentist's art, many titles. Titles that taught me dialogues, dialects, style, how to think and how to see: beyond my life, beyond my time, beyond my city, beyond the black of my dreaming eyelids.
I found books that I had forgotten:
A pocket-sized 'Cyrano de Bergerac' (with owner's signature and date: 1900)
'The Edwardians' by Vita Sackville-West (signed, "To Claire Beresford, Christmas, The Antibes - 1930. From D.")
'The Diary of a Young Lady of Fashion In The Year 1764-1765' by her 'kinsman' Alexander Blacker Kerr ("To Helen with much love, Aunt Janet - 1926")
And then I took out a very sorry littlte thing.
It had lost its cover. Tape yellowed the binder. The edges were thin: like tissue, like skin. The brown pages were weak and torn. It smelled musty, woodsy - thinking perhaps of the forests where those pages were born, shaved from fragrant acres of fallen trees. When I picked it up, it fell apart in flakes - words and phrases scattered into my hands.
It was my Roget's Pocket Theasurus. I remember using it in college, when I wrote my history papers - a cup of tea at my elbow, pretending I was a scholar. I used it for my English compositions, when a word would stop me with the efficiency of Becher's Brook.
Sometimes I would just read it - its Plan of Classification was my Periodic Table. The trails of definitions and uses were a word's DNA. It was a book of alchemy, a guide to magic.
Now, I use the thesaurus on my computer - always with a twinge of guilt. But I always remembered how this little book used to lead me through the tangled path of my language to find its hidden, living words.
I looked at it gently - I feared that even a hard glance would shatter it - before putting it carefully back.
It's torn and discolored. The cover is scuffed and ragged. In a human face these are signs of a life well-spent. Or of a long night out spent with some bad liquor.
But in a blanket, or a stuffed animal, or a book - anything that gives comfort, it seems - these are signs of love, of constant use. A look which - if these comfortable items could talk - above all things they want to have. A blanket was meant to be wrapped around its owner until the threads grew thin. A stuffed animal was meant to be cuddled until the fur began to fall off. A book was meant to be read until the pages were bent and weary, and the edges were oily from the reader's fingertips.
I bought this book a long time ago. It's a good one. The facts of Elizabeth's life are firmly entrenched in a fluid, easy narrative. I honestly can't say how many times I've read it, but I clearly had been alternately overeager and brutal in taking it out of the bookcase and putting it back. Its marks are not signs of abuse, but merely of use. And a book that has been used has been enjoyed; it has been read: which is all it wanted. A book doesn't want to be rebound in gold and morocco and kept in a display case.
'Lovelorn' is bad. 'Lovetorn' is good.
In North Hollywood, there is a marvelous bookstore named The Iliad. I gave it a visit last Friday - laden with food as I was, I was still agile enough to be able to scurry through its doors.
Inside, it is slaughtered with books (Does that make sense? I mean that the interior is simply OVERWHELMED with books). All ages, all categories. I mean, there's a shelf labeled 'Oddities'! Who couldn't spend a minimum of 2 hours there?
I bought an armful of books, one in particular that I'd like to mention. The title page reads thus: "Souvenir of the Willesden Carnival and Torchlight Procession, for 'The Daily Telegraph Soldiers' Widows and Orphans' Fund', Held on May 16th and 17th, 1900". Willesden occupies a handful of NW London.
It's a narrow, hard-covered book. Ten dollars. A title unusual enough for me to want, and cheap enough for me to buy. Which I did.
Now, in the early summer of 1900 the Boer War had just begun and the Seige of Mafeking had just lifted. So the theme of many of the floats was patriotic in nature. For instance, above is a float dedicated to Col. Robert Baden-Powell (known as "B-P"). He was largely responsible for the the British troops' survival of a seige that lasted over 200 days, using some rather clever tactics. But look at the photo carefully, peeps - there is a CHILD posing with a rifle.
Swivel to the right - sorry for the quality of the scan - to see a sad thing. The lettering on the side reads 'His Last Letter' and features a Florence Nightingale-type of nurse (don't think the uniform had changed much from the Crimea) and a fellow officer, with helmet doffed.
But there are some things which are just plain evil (turn eyes warily to the left).
And yes, what is a carnival without ladies and their festive bycicles? Go, Miss Allnutt!!
But there's more: this place was in possession of what all bookstores should have: an RK, or Resident Kitteh. I heard her mewing softly from behind the check-out counter, and when I asked - delightedly as well a a little hysterically - 'do you have a KITTY here?', her owner answered in the affirmative before going to feed her, which is really all Zola had on her mind at the moment.
Zola is a one-eyed, petite, floofy tortie kitteh, with a sweet, musical meow. When I was about to leave, I saw her again, completely settling down into 'Ignoring Aubrey' mode. But I was able to skritch her between the ears, and suddenly I was worthy of her presence. Such a dear, pretty creature. I took her picture from the Iliad's website (am I allowed to do that?). Her bio on the site is terrifying: she spent her first two years in a hamster cage, never receiving the care of a vet. Untreated infections led to the loss of one eye and some teeth, as well as leaving a scar on her remaining eye. If anyone is near The Iliad bookstore in North Hollywood, give it a visit, buy some wonderful things and give Zola some love.
I have a lovely book. Well, one among many lovely books. I bought it in Wales, in a place blessed among men called Hay-on-Wye. It's chief industry is the selling of books. Over thirty bookstores, in a tiny green town. One store was called The Castle Bookstore. Because, I'm thinking, it was a bookstore...and it was located in a castle. Sometimes my bouts of clear-thinking approach epiphanies.
It was there that I bought a lovely book: "Fancy Dresses Described: What To Wear At Fancy Balls". It was published in 1888, when such matters were more important than they are today. There were no Halloween parties, where the limit to one's dressing up abilities would be wearing a sixpack of Coca Cola for a hat and going as a coke head.
Different costumes were suggested for different physical and age types. Being dark-haired, I would be referred to as a 'Brune'. Suggested outfits for me would include: Arab Lady, Autumn, Bee (which I did go as at the age of nine, one Halloween long ago), Gipsies of various kinds, Carmen, Cleopatra, Druidess, Esmeralda, etc.
The book would list the fabrics and decorations needed for each costume (back then, they didn't come ready made!). If I was to dress as, say, Carmen, I would need an "equisite Spanish lady's dress, short white satin skirt...headed by bands of ruby satin, bordered with gold; down the front bows of gold braid tagged; stay bodice of white satin, with gold buttons..." and on and on. I would find the possibility delicious myself. If you were transplanted to the late 19th century, invited to a fancy dress ball, had your own couterier and unlimited funds - what would you go as?
