BOOKS “R” US

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Reed Books Antiques/The Museum of Fond Memories…a day unlike any other day, but curiously familiar…

OUTSIDE THE SHOP

It’s like a bolero out there, everybody choreographing their unique dances to life…

Remon grabs another of his many daily smokes outside my shop, on the way to the smoking parking lot, where so many others leave their cigarette filters…relics for future archaeologists to uncover and puzzle over.

INSIDE THE SHOP

Everybody brings baggage, everyone has a story—even if unconsciously so…

Geoff drops by and donates a brass-and-velvet stanchion, so that I can place some psychological boundary between myself and the occasional hovering customer.

Carolynne picks up copies of the latest Birmingham Arts Journal to spread the gospel of art and lit.

Randy decides to read Hemingway and Faulkner and Fitzgerald. There is hope!

ACROSS FROM THE SHOP

I can see the parallel businesses and activities going about their cycles…

Rhonda soaks the cooling sun and smiles her wisdom, surrounded by shoes and artifacts.

The Maid of Metering carefully prepares penalty notices for people who don’t know the rules and mysteries of Downtown Parking.

MEANWHILE, BACK INSIDE

The imaginary reality of each customer swirls around them, influencing the way they see the shop…

Kid customer purchases an enormous football-shaped balloon.

A grown-up attorney takes the life-size Marilyn Monroe home with him.

Another kid customer buys a flashing red disco light for his room.

One woman ogles the Leg Lamp and Mortimer Snerd and Piggly Wiggly head in the display windows.

Yet another purchases a wind-up bunny astride a tricycle.

One customer selects old postcards and comes back for more.

Somebody else stays in the front corner for five hours and reads ancient love letters and cards from my grandfather’s old post office boxes. Her bliss is unmistakable. The names of my relatives in Peterson, Alabama are on each box.

A Regular ushers and tours her friend through the shop.

Giggles emanate from the back of the store. Collectibles entertain them.

One girl seeks and finds Gulliver’s Travels and carries her smile home with her.

And so it goes.

You go climb Mount Everest.

I’ll remain here and have much more fun

© 2010 Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

www.jimreedbooks.com

THE GIRL WHO COULD SEE RAINBOWS

“Poppy, there’s a rainbow in your glasses!”

The tinny voice of a small five-year-old redheaded urchin focused my wandering mind. I stopped at the door, looked down over the armchair in the living room at Jessica, who was smiling cheek to cheek.

“What?” I asked.

“There’s a rainbow in your glasses!” Jessica repeated.

I looked beyond her at the morning cloudless sun beaming in and realized that my Coke-bottle-bottom eyeglasses must have been picking up the sun and tossing its rays into a prismatic wonderland for Jessica’s eyes only.

I grinned and beamed her smile back at her, enjoying the moment.

Then, it was out the door and to the car, a toddling lunchpail-carrier at my side, her fist tightly holding a damp quarter for milk.

Some mornings Jessica can’t seem to remember how to strap herself into the seat, other times she defiantly does it herself and don’t you try to help her. This time, just for a test, she claimed she didn’t know how and I had to lean over her jelly-mustachioed face to grab the strap and pull it over her lap.

The radio shot war words at my belly, and I decided to turn it off for a while.

“Why’d you do that?” Jessica again.

“What?” Me again.

Jessica: “Why’d you turn off the radio?”

I grunted and listened instead to the sunshine and watched closely the asphalt whooshing under the car, humming a song about the sunny side of the street.

Jessica looked over me and beyond my shiny pate to the sun that was racing alongside the car, making the east all yellow and white.

“The sun is on the sunny side of the street,” she remarked with hand-clapping delight.

So it is, so it is.

How can you maintain an early-morning bad mood when there’s so much sunshine coming at you from inside the car, as well as from without?

We maneuvered the cool white vehicle to the front of the school, I punched the button to release Jessica’s seat belt, yelled “I love you!” to the red streak, who turned for a second, repeated what I’d just said, and disappeared into the sunshiny morning air.

Here’s hoping your grumbly morning finds you with a rainbow in your glasses

(c) 2010 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

THINK HARD…DO GOOD

How much is there left to think, or think about?

I’m beginning to believe there are just a few original thoughts in the world, and that everything else is mere repetition, regurgitation, re-interpretation, mythologization.

What is there in life?

Well, you have your birth, from a womb or a tube.

Then, you have your expanse, all the way to death.

In between birth and death, there is activity, most of which is designed to avoid facing the reality that, well, we all begin and end the same way. There’s no getting out of this.

Activities between birth and death include automatic experience (breathing a millionfold breaths, feeling a billionfold heartbeats, uncountable blinkings, etc.) and somewhat controllable experience (laughing, ingesting, believing, disbelieving, ranting, relaxing, accepting, etc.).

Controllable experience sometimes disguises itself as uncontrollable (having faith, being cynical, being realistic, being a smartmouth, etc.).

Uncontrollable experience can make you think you’re really in charge when you’re not (waving a wand to make the sun hide at the exact moment an eclipse occurs, seeing the face of Jesus in a potato chip, pretending not to itch—which is one of the most profound things to accomplish, etc.).

The one thing hardest to face or believe or realize is that you’re in control of a lot more things than you can possibly imagine. You can decide not to act like a smartmouth (you can stifle a belch if you really try, you can hop one more inch than you think, you can look an unattractive person in the eye and see something really beautiful, etc.).

As meek and unimportant as you and I may be compared to the universe at large, we can be and act a lot more powerful, with effort and concentration. It is possible to make a difference, once we accept the notion that difference comes in many  sundry incarnations, mostly small and at first difficult to recognize.

Are there a million examples I could cite? Yes. But I’d rather describe just one thing and leave the rest of the metaphor, the figuring-out, to you—being as how you are so powerful and all.

Try this one thing:

Find someone who could use a smile or some cheering up. Pick someone you’d ordinarily ignore or dismiss or even dislike. Decide that you are far too powerful to miss this opportunity to step outside your small private cone of silence, that you will do this one thing. Leave a thoughtful and hopelessly cheerful gift where this person can find it.

Then, follow the immutable rules of true selflessness: Never, never let the person know who gave such a thoughtful thing. Never, never take credit for your act. Never, never write or tell about it. And…the hardest but most humane thing to do, learn to live without credit or reward for this special act.

Once you become comfortable with committing an anonymous and loving deed, the number you can continue to do will always be ten more than you imagine.

Just an idea

© 2010 A.D. Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

www.jimreedbooks.com