Writing about things I see while I'm waiting around
Three friends browsed in my shop. They knew each other well; they talked without looking, finished each other’s sentences or didn’t need to finish sentences at all. They argued a lot.
‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard in my life.’
‘Hey, I’m a professional. What do you mean?’
And they disagreed about books.
‘I read that. Didn’t do much for me.’
‘You always say that.’
And they agreed about family.
‘I heard about that.’
‘Yeah, the little turd.’
Painting by David Hettinger
“There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading — that is a good life.”
Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
Photography by Rosana Zanetti Fait
There is no difference between last year and every other year I’ve been here. There were small things, like mask wearing and checking in, but people, and my shop, basically remained the same:
What didn’t stay the same:
This was sad because Malcolm liked my shop and used to leave books for me in the storage room. It’s only because of Malcolm and Ann that I’m still here.
I’ve been really lucky for a long time.
Sculpture by Eudald De Juana
They’ve been in before. They always stand shoulder to shoulder so they don’t miss anything they might say to each other.
‘John Steinbeck. This one. I’ve got it though. Have I, or not…’
The others pause and look at him; then they turn back to the soft shelves, the soft books and the delicate powerful titles.
Strait is the Gate, Paludes, Steppenwolf, The Bloody Chamber, Slouching Towards Bethlehem…
They, the readers, lean in and murmur to each other.
I am interested in this group because they always make outrageous and unexplained choices.
(But why this book? Why? Why? What do you know? I am frantic to see through their eyes.)
‘There’s no Brontes here.’
‘There’s a couple of Lawrences. There’s that Norwegian thing. Huge number of pages. There’s these Penguins. They’re nice.’
‘My God, look at this.’
(Nobody looks, except me, rudely leaning forward to see. Whatever it is, I want it back.)
‘I need Oryx and Crake.’
(But this isn’t at the shop. I know because it’s at my house.)They shuffle along, pulling out oblongs of paperback, pushing their lips out, sharing gently everything they know.
‘I want The Moon Opera.’
(Damn it, so do I, now.)
‘What’s it about?’
‘Oh God. Don’t you know, the boiling water?’
‘Lend it me?’
‘Don’t have it. And it’s not here.’
(I am at my laptop, ordering myself a copy.)
They move along again; they are at the Viragos. I can’t believe how much they’ve read, and I am furious.
They talk and talk, together, but not quite in time. Spirals of it.
‘Any Stephen Crane? Any Helen Garner? Any Beatrix?’ They melt continents and sandwich centuries together.
‘Oh God. It’s Boyd Oxlade.’
‘What’d he write?’
‘You know. Death in Brunswick. I’m getting this, it’s hilarious as.’
‘Give us a look.’
‘You read Don Quixote?’
‘Not yet. Going to though.’
(So am I)
They stack the harvest and come slowly to the counter. I want all the books back. They know. They look at me, hard and assertive. ‘Credit card ok?’
It is.
Damn.
(Italicized line from Birdsong For Two Voices by Alice Oswald)
A big old straggling family come into the shop. Lots of them and stretched across a few generations. It was raining outside, the wind blowing it against the door. All of them had rain on their shoulders. One man was wiping if off his glasses. A girl texted on her phone with the rain misted all over it. They were lively and unorganized, so I gave them Dave Brubeck’s Unsquare Dance (on my Boombox speaker hidden away behind a pile of Dickens).
‘Oh my God, remember this song? Remember this movie?’ A young man elbowed an older man, an uncle maybe, who didn’t respond; he was looking at a biography of Mao.
The young man moved into a small private dance.
The family began to disperse. Some back outside, some into Classics, some into their phones. The dancing man continued on next to me. He used just two soft square feet of carpet, eyes closed, one hand still holding a copy of Treasure Island, the volume he had picked up just as Brubeck began his idea.
The family talked in small groups. Rotated and change their gestures. Head to head; an argument about tall ships, chin and eyes showing authority. There is whispering, hissing, and then pushing. Family member are on phones, on knees. The dancing man still scratching the beat in the air. An old lady, a grandmother maybe, looked at him over the top of her glasses. She has a copy of Wolf Hall. Later she puts it back. The music ends, and the young man straightens up unconcerned and moves into the front room. My playlist moves to Pavlov Stelar’s Hit me Like a Drum. The old lady suddenly becomes mobile and warm and strong. She dances three steps, one after the other. Then she stops and looks at me sternly. She moves into another room.
I play Alexis Ffrench’s At Last, and a lady in Gardening sighs and puts her head on one side. Who is she? Is she with them?
There’s another argument. What’s the capital of Romania? ‘You wouldn’t know, Graham.’
‘Look, mum, it’s a bunch of breeds of cats. You don’t want that, mum. Look at this. Get it. Get it for your shelf.’ Mum shakes her head.
Someone reads out loud three times, ‘The Cats of Dipping Dell’.
‘Found anything of interest, Margaret?’
‘Well. No.’
A boy buys a bookmark for his sister. He says, ‘Quick, before she comes back.’
The all stream out, and on the way Papa purchases a copy of Pinocchio for Lilly, who says, ‘Yes, I’ll read it. Stop asking me that all the time.’
The boy who bought the bookmark is last. He looks back at me. His face is a lit lamp.
They’re gone.
Illustration by Sarah Jane
Everybody’s fluent entry into the shop is checked now. The door is darkened with hopefuls doing their phone. They are, without exception, patient and kind.
‘Shall we check in?’
‘It’s not working.’ A lady swayed and bent over her phone, but her group were looking into the windows, faces on the glass, eyes screwed up.
‘Look at this.’
‘MARK TWAIN.’ Said in a scream.
‘Weird guy him.’
‘For sure,’
‘This isn’t working. The lady on the glass is turning her phone around and around.
‘Turn it this way. What are you doing? Turn it this way.’
‘No good.’
‘God. Government probably changed it.’
‘It’s worked.’
‘Get in then.’
‘I think that lady at the counter’s going to give me a dirty look if I try and take this coffee inside, so I’ll wait out here.’
I heard her say it, as I pretended not to hear her say it.
Then she crept in. ‘Can I have this?’
I said, oh yes, drinking my own.
They all stood and whispered. The rain banging away outside. Everything dark. I couldn’t place them, family or friends, hard to tell; a kind of magical people, especially the lady with the orange coat because the others all gathered about her, and they held up books for her to see, but she only wanted Charlotte’s Web; I heard her say it.
‘These are good.’
‘So are these.’
‘Look here.’
Are you getting that Twain?
‘Nope.’
‘Charlotte’s Web?’
‘Yes.’
And they all laughed.
Illustration by Outcrowd
“Prose fills a space, like a liquid poured in from the top, but poetry occupies it, arrays itself in formation, sets up camp and refuses to budge.”
Simon Armitage, Walking Home: A Poet’s Journey
I am always asked this. And told the answer.
The answer ranges between one and fifty million.
I, myself, have ranged between one and fifty million. This is because I am surrounded by bookshelves at home. If I can’t find my current, I just pick up another. So, Edith Wharton in there, Margaret Atwood here, and Gerald Murnane on the windowsill because he was too difficult, and Helen Garner waiting because I look at her Yellow Notebook and feel happy. These authors speak to each other.
But when I was younger, they were simply all in my schoolbag.
Now, I allow one or two. Ancient Rome here, and Radclyffe Hall there, and Inga Clendinnen in the car, and Spike Milligan in my bag, and Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun right here, so that’s more than one or two. And Ayn Rand.
It was a child told me about one and fifty million. Said serenely, as if telling me the date.
Illustration by Pablo Auladell
A man bought Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais from me. It was a heavy book, and old. An oblong.
He and his wife and another man stood outside the door on the footpath and looked down at it.
She said, ‘Good heavens, are you going to read that?’
‘He said, ‘It’s very good, it’s funny. It was banned once; in France where it was published in the 16th century. It was banned. Said it was obscene.’
The other man said, ‘Is that the one about the giants?’
‘This is it.’
‘Hilarious.’
They walked away.
Now I want a copy.
“I’m planting a tree to teach me to gather strength from my deepest roots.”
Andrea Koehle Jones, The Wish Trees
Illustration by Pascal Hoenig
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