Listen to Jim: http://www.jimreedbooks.com/mp3/sumitonannexesbirmingham.mp3 

or read on…

I learned the other day that my driver’s license had expired. Note that I did not receive a notice that my driver’s license is due to expire soon. I learned that only late notices are issued.
 
“Why would that be?” I ask my friend B.J. “They could just send me a note three weeks before expiration instead of three weeks after—you think?”
 
“Why would they do that?” says B.J. “If they tell you you’re delinquent, they get to assess a penalty on top of the license fee. It’s called revenue-generation.”
 
I don’t argue with B.J., since I can imagine no other other reason. I have to admit it is clever—and, of course, evil.
 
That’s why I find myself standing here in a Butler Building-type structure in Sumiton, Alabama, about to receive my pain-free driver’s license.
 
The day before, I had gone to the Jefferson County cathedral of licensing to obtain my renewal, only to find a long, long line of people ahead of me, some of whom had been waiting a long, long time. Denial is always my first defense, so I walked past the extended queue to speak to anyone who could tell me that this wasn’t really the license line.
 
“Yes, this side of the hall is driver’s licenses,” a very pleasant employee tells me, “And this other side is everything else having to do with licenses and the like,” she said. I said, “This is wild—is there a better time to come?” She smiled and reported that the situation is the same every day. “People start lining up at five a.m., even though we don’t open the doors till eight,” she reports.
 
I turn and beging the hall-long trek to the end of the line.
 
“Hey, Jim!” a familiar voice beckons. I look at the middle of the “other” line and see my friend Ben Elliott standing there, grinning his usual sardonic grin. “Are you trapped here?” I ask. “Yep,” Ben says. “It’s the way of the world.”
 
We chat and giggle at the outrageousness of it all. Ben is resigned to his certain fate, but I decide to just leave the building.
 
Being an optimist, I had parked at a half-hour meter.
 
So, next day, here I am in tiny Sumiton, northwest of Birmingham, grateful that Liz suggested I pay for my license in another, less disorganized county.
 
It actually works! A pleasant drive to this village, a chat with the librarian and a patron, a meandering path to the Butler Building, and I’m only third in line! Life is good.
 
Ms. Ash is the sole officer who processes licenses and apparently runs everything else: answers the phone, takes the ID photos, does the paperwork and wrangles the crowds—yep, she’s prepared for crowd control, herding the three of us as if we were fifty people. “Take a number…stand right there till that chair is empty…now, take the yellow chair after that…now, read this chart.”
 
We have a nice conversation, she does her duty, and I’m out of there in minutes, feeling smug but sorry about the long gray lines back in Birmingham.
 
The round-trip voyage to Sumiton gives me time to plan my next civic action. The campaign to have Birmingham annexed is all in my head, but with a little help from you, it could become reality
 
(c) 2012 A.D. by Jim Reed
http://www.jimreedbooks.com

The Coolest Heaven is where you are.

 http://www.jimreedbooks.com/mp3/seventhheaven.mp3

Listen to Jim: http://www.jimreedbooks.com/mp3/eveofchristmasremembered.mp3 

or read on…

It’s morning on the Eve of Christmas, 2011 A.D.

The last two weeks have been very busy at the Museum of Fond Memories, so I’m happy that the shop doesn’t open till 11 a.m. Since Liz is up and out , I’m alone to determine how to spend a much-needed quiet morning. The usual breakfast haunts are either crowded or closed, so I take my New York Times and head for McDonald’s, hoping for an isolated table and a few moments of meditative non-work activity.

The stressed employees humor me with my order—scrambled eggs, grits, two tomato slices, sausage and biscuit, with iced tea on the side. A rare chance to gorge—after all, it’s Christmas Eve, isn’t it?

While I’m just settling my brain for a long winter’s fast-breaker, a couple arrives at the next table, she with Santa hat and earphones, he with strained countenance and long gazes through the window. She doesn’t notice his inattentiveness, nor does she recognize my solitude. “I’m dreamin’ of a white Christmas,” she sings loudly, boogie-ing her body to the earplug sounds, blissfully unaware that there is anybody but herself in the establishment. She continues singing out-of-tune parts of other carols while her partner and I try to concentrate on our own tiny universes. The speaker system at McDonald’s is blasting other Christmas-related tunes, so my mind has to delegate two sets of simultaneous lyrics to their respective hiding places while I attempt to focus on the Times.

Later, on the way to the car, I begin to appreciate the girl’s annoying joy and realize I could use a little less grouch and a bit more Christmas boogie myself.

“Hey, what church are you from?” a shouted question careens over my left shoulder just as I’m trying to pile into the automobile. I have to twist around to see who’s there. A large wrinkled smiling face is staring at me and repeats the question, “Hey, what church are you from?” My first reaction is that I’m being panhandled, so I slam the door. Then, realizing I’m being testy, I lower the window to reply—suddenly realizing that the street man has assumed I’m some sort of clergy because of the black shirt, trousers and jacket I’m wearing, probably contrasted with my white Santa beard.

I don’t try to look like something special, this is just the way I am.

“No church,” I reply. Then, my fast mouth getting ahead of my thought processes, I add, “I’ve got a long night ahead of me, delivering toys.”

He looks startled and backs away, as if he suddenly believes me.

I drive to work and begin to focus on my shop and my customers.

Does Street Man think he’s just encountered some sort of Santa Claus?

Does Book Man think he’s just crossed paths with a needy soul who thought for a moment he might find peaceful words?

How many more opprotunities might I miss this day? Or did I do exactly the right thing?

How will I ever know?

I hope you have many good and mysterious encounters this and every week in this Land of Perpetual Post-Christmas

(c) 2011 A.D. by Jim Reed

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

Read below or listen here: http://www.jimreedbooks.com/mp3/WritersWrite.mp3 

As the images of storms past hover and sink deeply into our minds, many of us tend to rearrange our memories and allow them to fade.

This is unacceptable behavior.

The only plea a teller of true tales can make that is worth making is: Please don’t let this happen. Write down/record each detail of your experience, whether you were in the eye or whether you escaped physically untouched. Fact is, we were all touched, deeply and irrevocably.

What matters now is to work these events through the template of a muse, so that some degree of peace and closure and perspective can occur.

You are your own book, whether you know it or not, and now is the time to transcribe your life, to come to terms with the preamble, duration and aftermath of what you have lived.

The most important thing: Each non-storm day in a writer’s life is worthy of examination, too. Storms are easy to remember. Slippery moments of significance can fall to the ground and roll under something, out of sight, out of memory.

Don’t let that happen. Attention must be paid

(c) 2011 A.D. by Jim Reed

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

Do you workworkwork all the time? A decades-old entry in my Red Clay Voice Diary seems applicable today: http://www.jimreedbooks.com/audio/christmas/2/track12.asx

Listen to Jim: http://www.jimreedbooks.com/mp3/objectsofdesire.mp3 or read on… 

Be glad that I don’t tell you the story behind each and every Thing you select to take home from Reed Books/The Museum of Fond Memories. Be glad, because I’d hold you up for hours!

.

All the foundling books and artifacts in the shop have their own backgrounds, their own histories-—and stories could be told.

. 

In order to save time for both of us, it is best I keep the back-stories to myself so that you can purchase a wonderful artifact and begin your journey with it, with a clear mind and a vivid imagination. That way, you can create your own story, your own genealogy, and stamp the object with your indelible personality.

. 

This isn’t difficult. After all, the ephemera and books in my shop will never be as meaningful as the memories they evoke, the tales they force you to tell, the reflections they engender. Not only will you imbue your new-found treasure with your essence, you will also leave traces of your very DNA through the simple act of touching it. You will make your own story and carry it with that story’s subject till you are ready to end with a period and allow the next owner, the next heir, the honor of starting a new paragraph.

. 

This is dynamic archaeology, folks. And a thousand years hence, when diggers find traces of the book or diary or collectible you own today, they will be able to determine once more that the things we hoard and cherish are the things that tell our stories best.

.

And perhaps they will be able to revive us through that all-inclusive DNA that seeped into our objects of desire

© by Jim Reed 2011 A.D.

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

Listen to Jim: http://www.jimreedbooks.com/mp3/literaryvanitieshell.mp3 or read on…

The  Shopping Mall of the Literary Vanities is a one-of-a-kind destination point, at least today. Someday, it may be franchised and you’ll find them everywhere. Here at the Mall, you can stroll past storefront windows that display waxwork scenes of authors who are in the process of having what we call BOOK SIGNINGS. One window depicts Kurt Vonnegut puffing away and signing like crazy, as adoring fans are ignored and processed. Another window shows Rick Bragg kindly signing book after book for ‘Bama fans. Then, there are the windows of the Unknown Authors. Here, you’ll see one lonely writer after another sitting stiffly and staring ahead, pen poised, waiting for  attention from invisible throngs.

Naturally, in order to properly represent statistics, you’ll find about 98 lone-author displays for every two busily-successful authors. It’s a big mall.

This might as well be a Gary Larson cartoon more properly titled  The Shopping Mall of the Literary Vanities Hell that we writers often have nightmares about.

That was a dream. What follows is what happened today:

I’m driving into the parking lot of Little Professor, a book store in Homewood, Alabama, where, this very  Sunday High Noon, I’m attending a book signing.

Not just any book signing. My  book signing!

I’ve dusted off the last few copies of my title, Christmas Comes But Once a Day. Liz has decided it’s time I make myself available to the masses in order to sell off our “stock” before I add another handful of stories and publish a revised edition for next year.

So, here I am in the parking lot at Little Professor, about to spend two hours being The Author.

Why do I dread these events? Even more puzzling: why do I look forward to these events?

Any experienced author will tell you how wonderfully terrible and terribly wonderful book signings can be. Like many others, I’ve spent hours over the past decades, sitting in bookchain stores waiting for somebody—anybody—to buy my book and ask me to sign it, to no avail. Then, again, I’ve sat in stores where people have lined up to get my signature.

The fun part is having people ask.

The horrifying part is having nobody ask.

The even more horrifying part is never knowing in advance what kind of book signing event it’s going to be, till I’m already there, sitting nude at a table with a small sign over my head explaining what this geezer is doing in the middle of the store staring into space.

Today’s signing is pleasant, and I am relieved. A number of friends and strangers buy my book—as well as my writing book and my “Tweed Coat” book, and, better than that, some folks sit and talk with me and listen as I read a couple of Christmas tales to them. People can be so kind—thankfully.

I am relieved and grateful—and very glad that I don’t do this for a living. I’m a lot more secure in my old book shop, comforting all those long-dead authors who have been through many other book-signing hells…and I assume they, like me, are happier where they are than where they have been

(c) 2011 A.D. by Jim Reed

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

Listen to Jim: http://www.jimreedbooks.com/mp3/PortersArehouse.mp3 or read on…

Driving in from a dreaded trip into the bowels of the ‘burbs is worth every moment, once I arrive in the Southside/Downtown world I inhabit.

It’s comforting to see the sights many suburbanites will never enjoy:

1. An enormous sign: PORTERS AREHOUSE. Only we living ghosts of Downtown would know that this is the abandoned establishment once known as Importers Warehouse, now weather-sheared of some of its former identity.

2. The California Fashion Mall, which is a story unto itself (listen to my long-ago comments about that): http://www.jimreedbooks.com/audio/christmas/1/track10.asx

3. The haunting memory of long sterile rows of neatly regimented books in lock-step passionless order at an emporium I saw a few months ago. Can’t wait to get back to Reed Books/The Museum of Fond Memories, my homage to the way books ought to be treated: since each book is its author personified, I’ve always assumed that few authors would like it if we lined them up and forced them to stand at attention under cold fluorescent lights, bereft of any of the comforts near which they wrote their stories—such as the blankies and favorite chairs and tasty snacks and window-views and neighborhood sounds that provided a solid pedestal for their work. My shop is arranged so as not to insult book or author or customer with regimentation. Joy is everywhere in this little world! The merry confusion of Reed Books is part of my gift to you.

4. Stopping by my 1906 home, then driving to the 1890 building housing Reed Books, is a ritual and a privilege. These buildings are the center of my little world, and I love it when you visit. Come see things you’ll never experience in the ‘burbs, take home a memory, a memory you can use as seedling for spreading the gospel of Old Things and the wonderful feelings they evoke in people. Drop by and I’ll show you a few. 

5. Since Christmas comes but once a day in my world, pick a day and come in. See what this season can be all about in a dreamworld more realistic than anything you’ll find Out There

Jim Reed

(c) 2011 A.D.

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

Listen to Jim: http://www.jimreedbooks.com/mp3/AvoidTakingAdvice.mp3 or read on…

I’ve rubbed elbows with many wise and witty and even famous people in my span…I’ve had contact with even more wise and witty and famous folk via literature and media and public presentation.

You’d think that more than half a century of being exposed to the wisdoms and outrages of the renowned as well as the insignificant would make me a sage, a vizier, a Village Elder, one to whom you come to find a Better Way—or at least a Better Oblique View.

But, nay, even though the thoughts and comforts of far-superior people have crossed the threshhold of my consciousness as well as my conscience, very little seems to have adhered, not much of those wise and wonderful ideas have stuck.

This is mostly because I seem to have been born a Contrarian, a skeptic, a little professor who automatically examines each person’s reality and dismisses it as profound but inconclusive. Can’t help it. I’m just that way.

The good news is, I also inherently pick and choose the ideas and thoughts and wisdoms and witticisms that seem to fit my chaotic psychic makeup. This means that at times I am smart and alert and creative and helpful to those seeking help…while at other times I just have goofy ideas that entertain me but affect almost no-one else.

So, if you want to be in the presence of an active and entertaining mind, you have to approach me when I’m in the right place, cosmically. Sometimes you’ll run into a wise-cracking, ebullient curmudgeon, while at other times you’ll find yourself at the feet of the Master. I can’t tell you how to predict what you’ll encounter, but I can guarantee that if you approach me nonjudgementally and are open to a special experience, you just might come away with something nice to ponder. At the very least, you’ll have heard something funny or outrageous or off-center. And even that will bring you one step closer to mending the Universe until it fits you  just fine.

It would be a World more special if each of us would simply enjoy the moment and avoid trying to improve anybody but ourselves. Look upon it as entertainment—people are just who they are, and we would do well to leave them be. We just have to be cautious and give the angry and the violent and the bigoted a wide berth.

There are so many entertaining people to know that, once you learn to do this, you’ll never miss the disturbed ones

(c) 2011 A.D. by Jim Reed

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

Listen to Jim: http://www.jimreedbooks.com/mp3/bookieman.mp3 or read on…

BEWARE THE BOOKIE MAN!

We fellow People of the Words are a breed lying fallow at the edge of an unreasoning society, a truncated society that values but little the World of Thought, the World of Reflection, the World of  Thinking-Things-Out-Before-Acting.

Wouldn’t you say about three to four per cent of the barely educable planet actually cherishes the idea of Seeing Beyond dogma and cast-iron rules and comfortable habit and imprisoning ritual? I don’t meet many folks in this category, but I recognize them instantly and appreciate them excessively.

Not that I don’t enjoy the other ninety-six per cent of humanity, but it’s awfully difficult to conduct a discussion of just about anything beyond what they’ve been instructed to think by tradition, media, wily Fox, artful politician, manipulative corporate power. By now, I know all their rants by heart, since they are repeatedly injected into the ethos and comfortably worn like an old jacket or, in some cases, a scratchy burlap shirt.

I don’t mind their knowing only what they know and nothing else—perhaps that’s what they are capable of. But I do mind it when they don’t care to listen to my rants as carefully as I listen to theirs. As every teen-ager since time began says, “It’s just not fair!”

Anyhow, those of us comprising the tiny palmful of Think-Beyonders must sally forth and continue to keep a few fresh thoughts and ideas alive, hoping that a generation or two beyond will adopt some of them and make them blossom.

It is for this reason that many of us writers write, even when we’re not certain there are any readers at all. We keep plying our trade because to give up and abandon it would be insulting not only to our Muse, but to the Hopeful Universe at large.

It is why the book shop/Museum of Fond Memories clings and endures and thrives. It has to. We four per cent need something to read, something to think, something to contemplate—even if it doesn’t fit, isn’t our size, won’t quite cling to the culture.

We know we have a purpose, we just don’t know what it is. But we do know the effort is worthwhile

© Jim Reed 2011 A.D.

http://www.jimreedbooks.com