“I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.”
— Jorge Luis Borges
The Pure Joy of Holding Wonderful Books Hostage from the World Until One Dies
I spend too much time with neck tilted, bent sideways looking at the books in Goodwill. Nothing matters to me about it anymore. Nothing. I swear. Once, I would have felt idiotic all hunched over/ nudging my shopping cart along/ moving slow like some kind of homeless half paralyzed down-n-outer on his rough and humble way to trade in a couple of aluminum cans to get some change for whatever. Not anymore. I just don’t care anymore. I stand there before the 30 yards of unwanted books and I know what is coming. I’m going to pass my eyes over the spine and title of every single one of them. Like a crazy person. Like I’m actually doing this for monetary gain, like an Appalachian ginseng hunter focuses in on the forest floor in a way that none of us could ever do.
Except: I’m not going to find anything valuable here. And even if I did, I’d probably just keep it. I mean, it’s a problem, I guess. But I belong to that subculture of middle-aged people who collect books that aren’t at all collectible simply because I am compelled by compulsion to gather books around me with the spirited energy of a total whack job.
And what I mean by that is: I don’t think it’s normal at all. I’m not one of these people with a scanning app on their phone, zipping book barcodes to see how much each one’s worth. Those people have a masterplan and it’s a noble one. They are out here to rescue books no one wants and sell them for profit to people who, for a myriad of reasons, want to pay to own them. I buy lots of books from people like that. But I don’t sell any of my books because… well… because I’m a fucking idiot.
But who cares about all that anyway, right? Because the thing is, you see, buying books because they somehow speak to some deeply rooted part of you that is inspired by the mere notion that a book about ruffed grouse in North Central Pennsylvania actually exists (!) AND that that is one of my very special interests (I have so very many!), that is something special indeed.
You can’t own too many paperbacked copies of The Red Badge of Courage if they all have these different covers that each make your heart spin out of control. There is no point in telling yourself that even though you seemed to have developed an exciting newfound fascination with the Black Death in the 1300s, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you now need to own a small library’s worth of all the so-called best books ever written about that subject simply because they exist. Right?!?!
WRONG!
WRONG, MOTHERFUCKER!
Of course you need to have a new wing added to your house, you fool! How else will you be able to enter into this immersive deep-dive into everything Black Death if you don’t have all the books?!
The library, you suggest?!
Oh my god. I can’t tell you how much that pisses me off when people say that. The library. I will drive a tractor trailer through the front doors of the local library and I will personally rip that place apart with my own two hands!! Not because there’s anything wrong with libraries. Of course there isn’t. Libraries are literally the foundations and springboards for all that is worthwhile in humanity.
Except for one small hang-up.
They want the books back. Like, they want me to bring them back to them. Do not put these books on your shelf to wallow in unread misery for however long you manage to live from here on out, Mr Bielanko, they casually remark. Instead, please read them in the next couple of weeks and then return them at once so others can benefit from the books the same as you have been able to.
Which, again, is such an asinine concept. I need the books more for shelving than I do for reading, okay?
Duh.
I mean, everybody does.
You know that, right?!
These used books that I go looking at at Goodwill or whatever, they’re not just for me to read. They are also for me to have in case I decide to read them someday. And they are also for me to have in case I ever need reminding that I am an intellectual. And they are also for me to have because I like the idea of books that are mine.
Mine.
Mineminemineminemineallmine!
You don’t go check out a goddamn Labrador Retriever for two weeks and then bring it back to the rental place when the two weeks is up, do you?
Hell no, you don’t !!! (Although, you can probably do that nowadays if you want to, huh?)
I don’t care what anyone else says either. To Hell with everyone else. There is so much individual bonding between a book and its person/ its owner/ ME. My books are my babies. They’re my tribe. My books, as simply rustic and peasantly dusty and unread as they are, they are also my true, true witnesses. They watch me across my days. From shelves in the bedroom or perches on the stereo speakers, from short stacks by my bedside to high piles carefully balanced in front of entire bookcases already filled to the brim with books from before, each dog-eared copy of some mass-market paperback/ they all bear witness to me in all of my crumbling decay, all of my moronic splendor. I’m heading towards the end here before too long, man. And the books will see me out if I let them stay.
No one knows me better than my books.
When I’m gone? Again, who cares? My beloved worth-nothing book collection will inevitably return to the human mainstream. Auctioned off, maybe? Put in one of the kids’ attics? Donated to some other Goodwill down the line? It won’t matter to me. By then I will have retired from reading in favor of eternal darkness. By then, each and every book I ever got my poor grubby hands on and probably never read, they will have served me oh so well, indeed.
A Random Idea for People with Books in the House
Once I read something where someone was saying that they like to walk around their book-filled house and just stop somewhere and pick up any old random copy of this or that and flip it open to any old page and read to themselves, just a passage or two, before they just plop it back down and carry on with their day.
I found this to be a heroic idea. Immediately I thought that I should probably lay claim to the inspired notion as my own, but then in the next moment I thought better of that. Reason being, no one even gives a shit if you say you came up with an idea like that. Plus, I didn’t come up with it, and for all I know neither did the person who first brought it to my attention, so chances are that it isn’t even really a bona-fide original idea, but more of the kind of thing that has been kicking around forever simply because it just makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways.
So I let it go, the part about claiming it as my own. Then I also kind of let go of the part about actually putting it into practice in my world too. And that’s the axe I’m here to grind today, you know? Because I do in fact think that it is one hell of a plan.
So I’ll try it, okay?
I walk around the house/ on the way to take the dogs out to piss/ or on the way to do the dinner dishes/ or on the way to stand in the kitchen over by the toaster where no one can see me because someone is actually knocking at the front door (WTF, people? We don’t GO to other people’s houses and fucking KNOCK anymore! What is this: 1862?! Come on!).
I walk through the front room there over by the records and just stop in my tracks and reach down and pluck a paperback off the old black painted shelf given to me by a guy I once respected a lot. He died years ago now.
Anyway, what do I have?
Oh, hell yes!
Haha. You’ve got to be kidding me.
A copy of Ron Luciano’s The Umpire Strikes Back!
Open up to page….. what’s this…. page 53, slide my eyes… slide slide slide.
Here.
Go.
“I remember Yaz coming to bat in a gamer situation in Boston in 1976 … Before I could say a word, he looked right at me and said, “Listen, Ronnie. My kid is hitting .300, my wife is fine, and I haven’t heard any new jokes. I don’t want to know about Polish restaurants. I’m nothing-for-15, and I want you to keep your mouth shut.” What could I say? On the second pitch, he hit a home run. As he crossed home plate, he looked right at me and nodded. “Okay,” he said, “you can talk to me now.”‘
The whole mini-event from start to finish takes maybe 75 seconds.
I stand there a second letting it all soak in, whatever it is I’ve just done. Then I stuff the book back onto the shelf between and a well-hammered paperback copy of The Red Badge of Courage and an old stained edition of Foxfire Volume 2 before I start moving.
I hadn’t opened that book since I was probably 12 years old. My mom gave it to me for Christmas one year and now, for whatever reasons I still haven’t quite sorted out just yet, I am awash in feelings. And smiles. No lie either, it’s winter but I’m practically choking on the garlicky nip of fresh cut grass as I head out into the kitchen to grab a Diet Coke.
Jesus. It’s weird.
I sneeze once.
And I’m smiling to myself as I walk out into the yard, that fresh summer sun slamming into my sick old January bones. I’m on my way to pick up some kids at school. I’m on way to daydream of my younger self as I haul ass down this long valley road.
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Serge Bielanko lives in small-town Pennsylvania with an amazing wife who’s out of his league and a passel of exceptional kids who still love him even when he’s a lot. Every week, he shares his thoughts on life, relationships, parenting, baseball, music, mental health, the Civil War and whatever else is rattling around his noggin.
