Salvation

My obsession began some several years ago amidst the predominantly mahogany library of an older gentleman whose mind I greatly admired. And as the story always goes under the orange sun and the silver moon and the steel-cut stars, I was acting upon the impression that he greatly admired me for my mind as well. He did admire me greatly; he was just exactly gentlemanly enough to sheath the true metal of his admiration.

I passed precious plenty heady evening hours in awe of this dear older gentleman's bookshelves: the sprawling gilt etched and leather bound volumes, the patterns of wear on the spines of the countless tomes, the pristine battle formation of that grinding and tyrannical regiment of knowledge ever faithfully flanked by the ubiquitous bulwark of all civilization, cast-iron bookends. Through the amassed might of its accumulated terminology this erudite assembly compelled my prone body into the divan to bask saucer-eyed beneath its compendium glory, night after bristling night.

Then there were the other shelves. These shelves were not built into the walls, but purchased over time and with the necessity to placate the revolutionary tendencies of their now since sated occupants. These shelves were hauled into the library from estate sales and antique markets as the violent swarm of books dotting the borders of the Persian rug grew ever more numerous, and with each successive generation revolted against their master with ever quickening riotous ferocity. Each stack had its very own desires (by right) that were simply too progressive and too grand to submit to the indignity of piling up – one pressed down and weighing upon the other – and so they demanded, as had their predecessors in pulp, their own damn shelves.

These were the not so great books: the stacked, the cluttered, the dog-eared, the wax stained and the well thumbed. These were the books read under trees, at beaches and in warm drawn baths, under blankets with flashlights, atop porcelain thrones, at doctor’s offices and waiting rooms, on motor boats and piers, on airplanes, in kitchens, on trains, amidst the honeyed silences dotting those lazy lilting days of laughter and lovemaking.

At first blush – enticed by a foundling child’s desire for stability, security and institution – I was seduced by the stately leather of the glowering ministers peering down stodgily from their balcony seats. With age (I like to believe that the older gentleman at the time of our acquaintance came to the same knowledge of himself) I have come to appreciate that the grist of my desire can only be fulfilled on the spines of those not so great books. It is to them, and for them, that I offer up this confession.

On a night, whose details I will spare you at this point in our narrative, though rest assured I will not cheat you of the grisly blow-by-blow of that evening; I am merely, in a nod to craftsmanship, prolonging the race to our climax; after all, I am well aware that such sordid vistas are what you paid for, I will defer (for now) from the harrowing photographic recollection and simply say: on this night Possession pulled itself up the verdant lattice work reclining against the brick side of the old manse, slithered through the cracked window, bashed in the maiden’s blush of my pride with a tire iron or maybe a silver candlestick while her back was turned, watched her crumble (knees struck first and then cheek to the floor), swooped her up in his arms, absconded with her limp form and then revived her right before he had his way with her under the rose arbor.

I ascertained, while reclining after a soupçon too much port wine, meted out by the older gentleman’s carefully measured madness, that he did quite admire me, but not (as I had so quaintly believed) for the caliber of my philosophical dialogues or for the slim bundles of paper scrawled painstakingly with my deepest and most impressive thoughts, which I would occasionally slip under his study door while nervously chewing at the ragged cuticle of my left thumb.

He laughed outright as I haltingly and trip-tongued sought to explain what exactly I had thought he had brought me here to do. His body quaked from its chortling whilst my lips fumed atop the sacrificial pyre of their own worthlessness. And bless him for that. That unabashed laughter shot my sheepish girlhood execution style. The gaping hole allowed for the dispersion of those fluffy clouds of sentiment that hithertofore had coalesced over my sluggishly devotional synapses.

I could no longer remember how to truck with morals, ethics, epistemologies, hagiologies, ontologies, eschatologies, erratas, codas, philosophies. Nor could I call up the path home or the names of the flowers that lined it or the birds that sung above it. I had only one snarling and wide desire which animated my matter: to suck out and swallow his accumulated knowledge, to create of my very body a carriage for the contents of his great mind. Swallow it all down and I would be risen above the reach of that laughter for all time.

Thus, instead of scampering out the door all in a flush and a flurry of besieged maidenhood, I took a breath, shook out my curls, put my chin up (which was hard in the position I found myself in) and I started to swallow it.

I returned each and every evening until I had taken careful account of every single grand book on those shelves. He would absent the room to answer the door, to receive other guests in the drawing room (I was not fit for their discourse), to freshen his drink, to freshen my drink, to bring grapes to the side table. He brought me everything. He was afeard I might ruffle with too much excess movement. As his back receded down the golden glowing hardwood of evening hallways, I would hastily record – with acolytic exactitude – the title and the author of each volume upon each shelf on a small sheaf of paper that I concealed snug in the waistband of my skirt. The older gentleman’s downfall was that he was just exactly enough of a gentleman not to require me to thoroughly defrock.

After one last torrid evening, my inventory complete, I never again returned and he never once sought me out. Don’t fret, I will, later in our tale, provide a full accounting of our dénouement, a reckoning that verily reeks with the scent of old flesh and shimmies with the verdure of Victorian sins aquiver at the slightest unraveling of their corset strings.

After having gorged myself on the older gentleman’s vast field of accepted human understandings, at the very moment the last notion coursed into and coupled with my blood, the old gentleman fell away, passing your precious gravity. And I was left still wanting.

I found myself sneaking into the rooms where friends, acquaintances, co-workers housed their books; my camera tucked in my pocket, my skirt, my clutch. I would capture their bookshelves, their book piles and their haphazard desktops. My desire was sweeter if not as consuming as it had been with the older gentleman. But this was all merely a diminished surrogate, a crooked cobblestone on the path to a new vista of obsession.

I am finished with nonchalant strollings down hallways, darting glances back across my shoulder, snaking past the powder room, tenderly pushing in the doors of countless studies at innumerable garden parties and birthday shindigs.

I have blossomed into snapping photos of the bookshelves in Salvation Army and Goodwill stores. I discover myself, on the weekends, driving exorbitant distances to find fresh inventories. I frequently surprise myself perusing the paper for library sales and Church flea markets. When in dire need, I pull over at yard sales sinking to ever cheaper snapshots of blankets and tables languishing on lawns and in driveways spread over with abandoned books.

I wonder at the dismantling that must have scattered the older gentleman’s library after his inevitable death. Though we barely remain in the same century, the same country, the same landscape I search for the glint of his hallowed tomes amidst the crowd of plebian spines. At the sight of one distinguished leather volume slumming it amongst the self-help books I gag on my recollections.

Yet, I no longer yearn for that knowledge which is treasured, venerably pounding forth from the lips of marm and master. I seek what is cast off, scour the waste for that which we have deemed consumable, passable, excretive, and replaceable, refillable; I have a taste for trash. These acts, these objects, that afford a pleasure out of which no life can spring forth, books whose exegesis is desert, words who shoot virile like clowns in canons from the page, but who simply don’t have the staying power to father any storied discipline or prolonged contemplation, these are what fill me. I, myself, am a study in excrescence: always the lover less loved, the hand reached out and discarded, the thought pushed to the back of the mind. I am at home with what we hope to never see again, what we simply don’t have room for anymore, children never quite understood, possessions less prized, thirsts for romance slaked or staunched or fucked out of being.

I spend the hours I've been given in my photos, praying to be granted a vision of connectivity: two copies of one book, three romances by the same author, and a hymnal spread across one shelf. I am, I confess, possessed with what colors, what transgressions, what faiths, what disgusts, bitter sweet fare thee wells, renunciations, what past midnight returns to crying arms or closed doors, what lies, crimes, what forever lost love affairs and simple Sunday afternoons have brushed untold against this one shelf of discarded books.

In each store I purchase one book, just as in each house I used to pilfer one. How I choose that one book varies: sometimes it's the wear on the cover, sometimes the fact that it's never been read at all, sometimes it’s the scene of reading it conjures - a freckled boy in his backyard in a sandbox, a mother leaning against her counter with an ice pack to one eye melting over the pages. Oftentimes, I choose the book to rescue it from the two it is perched uncomfortably betwixt. But the reason is never an inscription; I don’t, as a rule, touch them before I make my selection.

I bring the book home. I place the photographs of its origin inside its cover so it remembers from whence it came, so it doesn’t get out of line, so it appreciates what I have to offer it.

Goodwill, #44: 3 shelves
Out of the Blue: Orel Hershiser, Orel Hershiser and Jerry B. Jenkins. A War in Dixie: Alabama V. Auburn, Ivan Maisel and Kelly Whiteside. Timebends, Arthur Miller. Sacred Dust, David Hill. Home Food: 44 Great American Chefs Cook 160 Recipes on Their Night Off, Debbie Shore; Catherine Townsend; Laurie Roberge. Once Upon Wall Street, Peter Lynch. Without Honor, Jerry Ziefman. Primary Colors, Anonymous. Timebends, Arthur Miller. Red Cat, Peter Spiegelman. Swim with the Sharks without Being Eaten Alive, Harvey Mackay. The Right Dose. John dos Passos, Wrenn. Research Methods for Social Work, Rubin Babbie. The Human Odyssey: Lifespan Development. Essential Oils. Uprising, MacManus. Breakpoint, Richard A. Clarke. Lady Boss, Jackie Collins. And Venus is Blue, Mary Hood. Steps to the Altar, Earlene Fowler. Tears of the Dragon, Baxter. The Ring, Danielle Steel. The Face Changers, Thomas Perry. The DaVinci Code, Dan Brown. The Alchemist, Caleb Carr. The Dragon Lord’s Daughters, Beatrice Small. Arkansas Traveler, Earlene Fowler. Those Who Love. The Double Image. The Way of the Eagle, Churchville. The Struggle for Survival. Good News Bible: Today’s English Version. Happiness is a Stock that Doubles in a Week. A New Song, Jan Karon. Stargazers and Gravediggers: Memoirs to Worlds Collision, Emmanuel Velikovsky. Last Train from Atlanta, Hoehling, Other Women's Children, Class. Dave Barry Turns 50, Godly Play, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Nutrition, David Rueben M. D. Yesterday’s Children, Brett Halsey. Practical Intuition, Laura Day. The Surprising Power of Family Meals, Miriam Weinstein. Loving God, Colson. Summer Captive, Pollock. The Copper Peacock and Other Stories, Rendell. Last Wish, Betty Rollin. World Weavers: Gifts of the Unmade, Alexander. The Reader, Bernard Schlink. Red Mesa, Aimee and David Thurlo. The Gemini Contenders, Robert Ludlum. Critique of Legal Order, Quinney. Reflections From a Mother's Heart. Mistress to Her Husband (large print), Jordan. Love Finds a Home, Janet Oke. The Screwball King Murder, Kin Platt. Basilisk, N.M. Browne. Patriot Games, Tom Clancy. Sports Firsts, Patrick Clarke. Sunshine and Shadow, Earlene Fowler. The Folded World, Amity Gaige, Wanderlust, Danielle Steel. Readers Digest Condensed Books: Cold Harbour by Jack Higgins, Circle of Pearls by Rosalind Laker, The Bear by James Oliver Curwood, Finders Keepers by Barbara Mackenzie. Winter Door, Carmody. Across the top of the shelf: Sleep, Baby Sleep, Hague. A Better World For Our Children, Spock. Silent Sons, Dr. Robert J. Ackermann. Whatever Happened to the American Dream, Burkett. Regrets Only, Sally Quinn. The Rule of the Lawyers, Walter K. Olson. The Englishman's Boy, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Advances in Insect Physiology, volume 1, 1963.* Mockingbirds and Angel Songs & Other Prayers, Carr & Sorley. A God Against the Gods, Allen Drury. The Dawn's Early Light, Stowell. How to Win at Horse Racing, Robert V. Rowe. The Road Ahead, Bill Gates. The Love Letter, Kathleen Schine. The Scottish Joke Book. Cold Day in July, Stella Cameron. Tainted Truth, Cynthia Crossen. Disciplines of the Home, Ortlund. Red Baker, Robert Ward. The Last Valentine, James Michael Pratt. The Raiders, Harold Robbins. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders in Children. The Prosecutor, James Mills. Devices and Desires, P.D. James. The Journey of Self-Discovery by His Divine Grace, A.C. Bhaktivedanta and Swami Prabhupada. A Dictionary of the Environment, Allaby. Cavedweller, Dorothy Allison. Intuition, Allegra Goodman. Who Will Remember the People?, Jean Raspail. “How Can You Defend Those People?”, James S. Kunen. My Life and Country, General Alexander Lebed. Ceramic Materials for Electronics, Buchanan. Disappointment With God, Phillip Yancey. Echoes, Danielle Steel. *purchased