I made a trip to the parallel universe of North Alabama.

FROM DOWNTOWN TO DOGTOWN AND BACK AGAIN

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FROM DOWNTOWN TO DOGTOWN.mp3

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It is just this last Thursday night. I find myself atop a mountain in Dogtown, south of Fort Payne,  north of Collinsville, watching a clear cool sky and feeling the wideness of the open spaces around me.

Just east of where I am standing, the red planet Mars is appearing on the horizon, and to the west the diamond-bright planet Venus is about to be occluded by the trees below.

It is a night to take a deep breath and wonder why you can see so many more stars on this mountain, stars that you can’t see in Downtown Birmingham. Years ago, when Reed Books was located within the Wooster Lofts on First Avenue North, I would climb four flights of stairs above my bookloft at night to gaze at the city–Vulcan would wave from afar, aircraft would whoosh past to land—then leave—the airport, lone walkers would dodge the occasional automobile on the streets below. Above, the moon would moon me, a meteor would give me an instant razz, and I could see a bright star or steady planet cruising on by.

Anyhow, back to Thursday night, where my mind is right now. I’ve come to this mountain, two hours from Birmingham, to speak to a gathering of volunteer chaplains who make sure that hospital patients are not alone spiritually when they don’t want to be.  Inside the restaurant—much warmer than the outside mountain air—I find folks who are relaxed and happy about where they live and what they do, in Dekalb and Cherokee Counties. They are close to Mentone and Chattanooga, not too far from Birmingham, but far enough away to feel like country folks when they need to.

It’s clear to me, a couple of hours later, as I hurtle back towards Downtown Birmingham, that most of us find a way to have some peace and quiet midst the hustle and smoke and sounds of the city. Folks back in Dogtown can go to people-laden places whenever they need a break from solitude…folks in Downtown Birmingham can find solitude when they’re done with crowds. In Downtown, I see loners finding occasional solitude in their idling cars, in pocket parks, within their earphones, behind their closed-lidded eyes, inside a restroom or in a stock room, on a streetside bench, in a quiet loft room, on the back pew of an empty church. I notice people who, even in a crowd, can find solitude for a moment—at a symphony concert, in the corner at a cocktail party, inside a book huddling in an alcove.

So, Dogtown and Downtown are just names we give places. In each place, people can find what they need if they use a bit of imagination.

Back in Birmingham the next day, as I leave work, I walk onto the parking deck adjacent to the century-old building that houses Reed Books Antiques/The Museum of Fond Memories. It is nearly dark and the sunset is spectacular in the middle of the city. To the west, I can see First Avenue South running straight toward the sun. To the north, the truncated skyscraper we used to call the Daniel Building shows evidence that some employees haven’t fled yet—perhaps they’re taking in a bit of solitude before fighting the traffic. To the east, Mars is struggling to be seen again, and a solitary aircraft dips towards the landing strip. I breathe deeply, realizing that, whether it’s Dogtown or Downtown, I can always find a sky and an interlude just when I need it most.

© 2010 A.D. Jim Reed

www.jimreedbooks.com

PS:

Click here for a sticky note novel, complete in a few seconds.

http://jimreedbooks.com/mp3/StickyGIDDYUPtwo.mp3  

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When I was a mere bud on the verge of wilting or blooming, I discovered that I was alive. Not just existing, not just the figment of somebody’s bad-joke imagination, not just a folktale, not just a lump of granite…I was actually alive, I realized.

Up to that point in my brief life, I had existed on pure instinct and template, breathing, eating, obeying the rules created and enforced by beings in charge of my care. I got along, and it looked as if the world around me got along, too.

Then, one day, I yelled Shazam! and woke up to the fact that I was alive.

It was an amazement.

This kind of thing can happen only once, you know. It’s a unique experience. After all, you can’t wake up one day and discover that you’re dead. Alive is all you know.

Anyhow, after I was born, it took me a few years to come alive…but once alive, I began to record my living, my life. I wrote with crayons on walls, with large thick grammar-school-red number two pencils on butcher paper, with quill dipped in indelible ink on onionskin, with strong finger-jabs at manual typewriter keys, and eventually with keyboard-clickety glowing electronic screen.

What did I write?

Well, poetry, I guess.

What was my first poem?

Uh, I don’t know. But a very early poem came from my telescopic examination of the universe above me. I noticed that planets and satellites had texture, some human-made, some accidental-acts-of-geology-made. Thus, the poem:

Go figure.

Every poem or story I wrote reminded me that I was alive. What came out of my mind and heart and gut traveled through my fingers and wound up in print. Most of the time, the writings just popped out, unedited and ready to read. Sometimes I had no idea where they came from or what they meant. But they were always deeply felt. I had the idea that if I felt what I was writing, the reader would, too. After a half century of writing, this fact eventually had gravitas. After I wrote a few thousand pieces, I became confident, the words flowed easily, and I developed a to-heck-with-rules attitude and just write what I damned well please.

This is fun.

Now, it’s your turn to discover that you are alive.

Prove it.

Write me a poem

WHAT TO SAY AFTER ALL HAS BEEN SAID

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http://jimreedbooks.com/mp3/rapt.mp3

What in the world would somebody like me have to say to a rapt audience had I the opportunity to say something useful?

I never know the answer to that question, but that does not prevent me from accepting invitations to speak before all kinds of groups large and small, young and old, literary and non-literary. People invite me to speak or teach, and I almost always accept. For instance, this coming Sunday at the Alabaster Library I’ll be speaking on the topic(s) “How To Become Your Own Book” and “What to Keep and What to Toss.”

The first is all about the joy of writing, how to find it, how to keep it, how to do it, how to stop doing it if it isn’t joyful (see my outline at http://www.jimreedbooks.com/become.html )…the second is in answer to the age-old question that we all ask eventually: Do I need to keep this or throw it away or donate it or stomp it or re-gift it or sell it? (I have the answer, though you might not like hearing it).

How does all this running about and making public appearances fit in with my otherwise hermit lifestyle, the lifestyle of a bookish bookie who writes books, sells books, reads books, edits books, purchases books, gifts books, donates books?

Well, here are a few answers to that question:

1.     Making speeches, conducting seminars, teaching…all serve to get me out of the shop, out of my shell, re-connect me with the general public I tend to hide from most of the time. I obviously-and reluctantly-need some social contact now and then.

2.     Doing all this public stuff allows me to spread the gospel of respecting old things, old memories. It’s important to recognize the past as part of our journey into the future. It comforts and sustains us, teaches us what works and what doesn’t work, what is right and what isn’t right. We don’t just wake up one morning wise…we have to travel forth and experience life in order to learn much of anything worth learning.

3.     Going forth introduces me and my hideaway (Reed Books/The Museum of Fond Memories/The Library of Thought) to folks who long to know such a place exists somewhere in the world. Believe it or not, after 30 years of  my owning the shop, most people still do not know it exists. Each day, new visitors arrive at the door saying, ”Why didn’t I know about this?  Awesome!”

I get a kick showing them around or leaving them alone to wander through the looking-glass all by themselves. They almost always find a treasure or two they don’t want to live without.

4.     Wandering around telling my tales gives me a chance to hear other peoples’ tales, too…and everybody has them! Some even become so excited that they begin to write them down,  after I’ve simply given permission for them to do so. It’s an amazing thing to behold.

And so on.

There are other reasons for getting Out There and sharing myself, but these will do for a start.

Every day is a new reason for leaving a legacy of respect for the past, appreciation for the present, and hope for each future day we can make better in some minuscule way.

Let’s get out there and do it alone together

© 2010 A.D. Jim Reed

http://jimreedbooks.com

WRITING THE TRUTHS OF YOUR LIFE.

First, think of the most unlikely, or the most annoying, or the most seemingly unimportant thing in your life and start writing about it. For instance: http://jimreedbooks.com/mp3/tooth.mp3 

(c) 2010 A.D. Jim Reed

www.jimreedbooks.com

DONDER GETS HIS NAME BACK

Some time back, I wrote a Christmas piece in which I referred to the reindeer Donder and Blitzen. When the story was published, an unknown editor had changed Donder to Donner without my permission—and without Donder’s.

What! you say, It is spelled Donner.

Wrong, Reindeer Breath!

Clement Moore, reputed author of A Visit from Saint Nicholas (‘Twas the Night Before Christmas), clearly named all eight reindeer, and he wrote more than once that Donder’s name is, well, Donder—not Donner!

This means that Gene Autry (first recording artist to electronically transcribe the song Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer) got it wrong. He simply mis-read the lyrics.

So, for once in our lifetime, let’s get it right. Pay respect to Donder by calling him by his rightful name.

Anybody who calls this trusted Santa helper by his incorrect name will hereafter be known in reindeer circles as a Donderhead.

Merry Happy Christmas, Donder and Blitzen and all you other reindeer and reindeer fans

Jim Reed © 2009 A.D.

www.jimreedbooks.com

DID I EVER TELL YOU WHAT TO GET ME FOR CHRISTMAS?

http://jimreedbooks.com/mp3/tell.mp3

Click above to listen…click below to read.

If you really want to please me, if you truly wish to give me something that will make me smile, if you want to feel you’ve done the right thing by me, then read on:

This Christmas, give me something personal, something of yourself–not something you picked up at the Mall or ran into the Pharmacy and grabbed at the last minute. Just this one Christmas, I would love to receive something truly personal, something that is part of you.

The gift you give as a part of yourself could be any number of things.

You could write a little poem for me, one you made up all by yourself.

You could sing me your favorite Christmas carols, the ones you’ve loved since childhood.

You could do a little performance for me–a funny jig or a joke or two about what it’s like to know somebody like me.

You could draw me a picture and sign your name at the bottom and date it, “Christmas, The 21st Century A.D.”

You could take me to dinner all by yourself and sit and chat with me over some nice food and drink, I listening to what you have to say and you listening to what I have to say.

You could make a little album of photos and memorabilia about me and you, and give it to me with a loving hug.

Get the idea?

You may come up with something better or something more interesting than any of these–that’s ok. As long as you give me something personal, something affectionate and caring, I will be happy.

Maybe you feel uncomfortable, trying to improvise a Christmas gift for me. Perhaps you’ve gotten used to going to the store and purchasing something, and maybe you feel this IS a personal way to gift me. If that’s so, then here’s something you can try, something that may please us both: Go to the store and find a delightful little toy, a toy that makes you smile, involuntarily. Then, bring me that smile–and the toy, too. We can enjoy the toy and our mutual smiles together at the same time!

If all of this is just too much trouble, you could even do this: take me to lunch and ask me what I’d like to give to you, if I could only afford it or if I could only do it just right, in a way that you would appreciate.

Anyhow, I thought you might get a kick out of learning the answer to that age-old question we all ask each other every year: “What do you want for Christmas?” This year, I thought I’d tell you the truth, as I feel the truth this year.

Give me part of you, and I will try to return the compliment next Christmas

–Jim Reed (c) 2009 A.D.

www.jimreedbooks.com

SAVING THE HARLEM REINDEER DREAM 

Harlem Reindeer

(Read below or click audio above.)

My first visit to Harlem to visit Oliver Hardy was just a few years back, but I can’t forget it.

Let me back-track.

I’m driving the long and barren interstate between Augusta and Atlanta in the dead of winter. The sky is gray, the asphalt is gray, the grass and trees are gray, and the mood is grayish. My wife, Liz, and my granddaughter, Jessica, are with me. Suddenly I see a roadside sign directing me to Harlem, Georgia.

Interesting. There is a Harlem Down South?

Then, the next sign tells me that Harlem is the birthplace of the late film comedian Oliver Hardy, of Laurel and Hardy fame.

This is my chance to break the gray day into something smileful. Without asking anybody’s permission, I swerve onto the road to Harlem.

“Where are we going?” Liz asks.

“Why are we turning?” Jessica asks. She’s in a hurry to get to Columbia, South Carolina, to visit family.

“Oh, I’m just going to check something out,” I say. “Maybe we’ll have fun!”

Both passengers grumble and try to go back to their naps.

Suddenly, I’m yelling, “Look look look!” rapid-fire, to make sure Liz and Jessica wake up and look ahead of us on the two-lane blue road.

There, half a block away, five deer are crossing the road, and Jessica claps her hands in delight,

“Are they reindeer?”

I make my usual retort, “Maybe this is where Santa keeps his reindeer off-season.” Jessica is still young and hopeful and a Believer, so she accepts this explanation without a hint of cynicism.

We drive on in to Harlem, the gray day broken by smiles and daydreams.

Harlem is a tiny town, but, sure enough, it’s the hometown of Oliver Hardy. Nothing is open today, since it’s Sunday, and this is long before the Laurel and Hardy museum is fully functioning.

We visit for a while, find that some locals don’t know who Hardy was, find that others are proud of who he was. Liz and I enjoy the visit, but Jessica doesn’t know who these comedians were, so she’s just along for the ride, still thinking about those five reindeer.

Years later, when Harlem has its act together, I take grandsons Ryan and Reed to Harlem, and they get to see a Laurel and Hardy movie, which makes them instant fans.

But today, driving out of Harlem and heading back to the interstate, Jessica starts to settle down in the back seat and Liz closes her eyes while I drive.

Once on the interstate, I’m driving along at my usual at-the-speed-limit rate when I see in the rearview mirror a truck bearing down on us and getting ready to pass. The large open bed of the truck has something gray piled onto it, so I glance again, as it starts to pass us, to determine what it is hauling.

Two hunting-capped men are in front and in the bed are five fresh deer carcasses, their antlers waving with the truck’s motion.

Since they’re passing on the left, I quickly yell, “Look over there! (pointing to the right-hand fields) What’s that? Do you see that?”

Liz and Jessica rise up and peer to the right, their attention focused intensely, just as the truckload of deer passes on by. I keep making up stuff to keep them searching the fields, until the truck is out of sight. Then, I have to fabricate something so they won’t think I’m completely crazy.

“I thought I saw a grizzly!”

They look at me funny and settle back down, never having seen the truck.

And I continue the drive toward Augusta, slightly proud of myself for having saved one little girl’s dream of Santa for at least another season

–Jim Reed © 2009 A.D.

 MY ANTEBELLUM CHRISTMAS PRESENT

http://jimreedbooks.com/mp3/victorian_christmas1.mp3

(Read text below and/or listen by clicking above.)

Every trip to the old antebellum house was like Christmas Morning.

Whenever I could get there, by way of bus or foot or bicycle or ride-hitching, I felt like Christmas had just gotten jump-started.

The antebellum home in Downtown Tuscaloosa, back in the 1950’s, had expelled its original dwellers and converted itself into the County Library.

It seemed to exist solely for my pleasure.

Up the stairs not racing in slow motion—didn’t want to incur the wrath of a shushing librarian—I would head for the bookcases containing the knowledge of the known world and the imagined knowledge of undiscovered worlds.

Opening each book was like unwrapping a Christmas gift.

Each volume contained its own peculiarities. In addition to the printed words within, there were always imagination-laden surprises:

A pressed flower might drop spinning to the floor.

A scrap of paper complete with cryptic message would unfold itself and read its contents to me.

A margin scribble or an underline would challenge me to guess what a previous reader’s life was like.

Mustard stains might tattle-tale whether the patron read at night or on the run at a hot dog stand.

Unmistakable tobacco fragrances absorbed by the paper would be identified by brand-name (Cherry Blend was popular).

Little crayoned bookmarks and turned-down corners made certain pages more intriguing.

Coffee rings exposed the previous reader’s carelessness.

Librarian mutilations included penciled numbers and rubber stamps and glued pockets and dog eared dated cards and taped-down dust jackets and intrusive binding materials and repaired/reinforced spines.

The heft and texture and color and fragrance and flaws of the physical book were more fascinating than the book itself, at times.

The powerful shower of Holmesian clues would almost make reading the book an anticlimactic exercise.

To this day, I prefer the flawed personality of a well-used book to the pristine untouched edition that nobody ever opened.

Every book has its own history, my dear Watson. I can tell you a lot about what that book has been through just from all the clues and hints of clues that warp it and give it character.

Visit my antebellum shop in the Center of the Universe and commence your sleuthing

Jim Reed © 2009 A.D.

www.jimreedbooks.com

Reed Books Antiques/The Museum of Fond Memories and the Library of Thought

at the center of the universe

2021 Third Avenue North

Historic Downtown Birmingham, Alabama 35203

Hours: Tuesday through Friday 10:30am till 5:30pm & Saturdays 11am till 4pm

OPEN CHRISTMAS EVE AND THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS!

GRASSHOPPER GROWS UP

Once when I was oh so young, a vizier came to me.

He first was coy, was but a boy, but said he’d set me free.

He stood by while I cried my fear, he let me show my ache;

And when I dared to act real brave, he’d give my hand a shake.

I grew up and went my way, but wondered who he was,

This vizier who cared for me and let me find my cause.

One day as I was feeling whole and pure and fine and proud,

I glanced into a mirror…exclaimed in awe aloud,

And waved at my now old vizier, who carried me through life;

And puzzled how he’d known that I could deal with all life’s strife.

This vizier boy, now vizier man, had known it all along,

Known that I would catch up, catch on, sing my own sweet song.

Now that I am oh so old, my vizier stays with me.

He lives within my mirror and waits there patiently,

Making faces when I’m sad, winking when I’m glad,

And seeing what I am and was—just a star-struck lad,

Wryly helping mark my time, slow to criticize,

And always looking straight at me through my own star-struck eyes

© 2009 A.D. Jim Reed