5.09.2011

Book Overdose

I've spent much of the past few days plowing through a giant storage unit packed to the rafters with, among other things, hundreds of boxes of books. Which is the heart of the profession- sifting and buying. If you can nail that, everything else falls naturally into place. The unit was donated as part of a bequest and will be the heart of a fundraiser for the local public radio station and they were allowing the well connected to poke around as a sort of 'pre-sale'.

I went at it like a badger, burrowing in and making myself at home. Plenty of other folk dropped in, but the intimidating presence of so much undifferentiated stuff traumatized their consumer impulse. They buzzed and stuttered like short circuiting robots, making confused, desultory motions toward the obvious flotsom that had washed up at the front before fleeing, as if before a looming wave.

I suppose this is why middle men have a job- sussing out 'the good stuff' is work, and doing it well takes experience, knowledge and persistence. Most folk confronted with commercial volumes of anything would retreat in confused disarray.

Its a reaction I suffer every time I visit someplace like Home Depot.
"Oh wow, I could do ANYTHING with all this stuff they have here....uh....urk...getting...dizzy...where's the exit!"
I'm much more comfortable at our tiny Ace Hardware down the street than one of the gargantuan warehouse outlet. If I were a contractor, it'd be a different story.

And sandwiched between two days of storage unit spelunking was a library sale. And the previous week saw one of our scouts showing up on the doorstep with a van load of hundreds of boxes of stuff. I have a fantastically high tolerance for looking at books, but by 4pm yesterday my eyes were rolling around in opposite directions and I was making motorboat sounds by pinching my lips together and blowing. All I needed to complete the picture was a Napoleon hat.

Happily, last night delivered a fine opportunity to decompress; dinner at Goshi's. I hadn't been since they were Tsurugi's and was a bit nervous, but the service & quality were as remembered. Had a few glasses of their top shelf sake, salved my abraded nerves with a raw fish compress & helped the rest of the table goad Devra into slipping the waiter her number.

Up this morning with Fuss, feeling refreshed and eager for the AM viewing of Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
Wheeee!

1 comment:

Lemonsweet said...

Great post! You have a case of hyperbibliomania.
Happy Birthday to you this happy day!
love, tv