To know used books is to know the indigent, the diseased and the lonely. Cast offs congregate. The slave to the White Lady, hiding his tracks, ineffectively, beneath a quotidien red turtle neck, casting his spittle through his broken gates--shucking and jiving and praying there aren't any scuffs on the discs he peddles--what kinda junkie collects that much opera, anyway? And Jamie Johnson, crying at the bus stop with her busted foot and bad eye, who can't haul herself to a shelter and they don't open til dusk, anyway, and the man at the house she left, well, he pushed her down and went in her panties and took her money and her pills and she can't get no more, I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die without my meds, can't you help me? And the quiet man. And the one who speaks. And the weeping sores they're not as good at hiding as some of us.
Books never say no. Always yielding, without pretense or prejudice--inexaustibly generous with their offering. A portal, a mirror, a voice to accompany or quiet our residents. A chorus built of tongues, webs and protean desires.
Science tells us now that the study of quantum mechanics is the study of the structure of consciousness. The choices we make inform the outcomes manifest. So whatever informs our consciousness, in turn informs our choices and shapes our experience of reality. Perhaps a book is a key, then, to a hallway of doors. And every smile we give or get, and every warm regard or desultory glance, every kindness paid and repaid, the broken families and broken promises, the chemical waves we call love, hate, mourning and ecstasy that push and pull us toward vanishing points--keys, all.
I cannot express my gratitude for living a life of books. Two days from now, I won't work at a used bookstore anymore, perhaps ever again. But its metaphors have not eluded me. Choice begets reality and so on, ad infinitum. A random number generator, a kaleidescope. What enchantment. Awe and sorrow.
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