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WHAT I MIGHT HAVE MISSED HAD I BEEN TEXTING
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My hand, wrist deep into jacket pocket, searches for a bookmark to turn over to a chatting stranger. Then, that oddly human experience of being able to sense many things all at once kicks in, and I realize that the pocket is in reality a time capsule filled with interconnecting disparate bits of history, the history that is part and parcel of my minuscule life.
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From the innards of the jacket, I pull forth a rumpled sticky note, part of a napkin on which are scrawled earth-shaking notes that must be preserved, a Dum Dum wrapper (cherry), one plastic toothpick (bent), three semi-shiny pennies, a ticket stub (Doc Severinsen concert), and three bookmarks.
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I hand over a bookmark (my business card) but quickly retrieve it because I see handwritten Haiku on the back. I replace it with a clean bookmark and re-pocket the paper cunieform.
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I won’t bother you with the contents of the other two jacket pockets and the four pockets of my trousers. Troves!
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Later, I become aware that my bookshop is one big pocket of ongoing experiences melded with tiny and large mementos of what the past contains and what the future might bring.
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Reaching into the shop, here’s what is going on right now, in memory and metaphor:
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One deliberative and unsmiling customer is fragranced with powerful perfume and powder, his long multi-colored fingernails clacking at the smart phone screen…two
timequake skateboarders gaze up, down and around in awe of the books and doodads…a happy flower child straight out of a time machine purchases St. Exupery…one customer devoted to G.K. Chesterton and H.G. Wells exits the store, beaming down at his cradled books…a no-read (as in, “I never read books”) tagalong wife waits patiently for her WWII-collecting spouse…several different millennials wander around, unable to caress a book but eager to texttexttext…a South African tourist says his kids could not understand why he would mail them a postcard instead of simply texting (they did not realize the card itself is a gift of love)…somebody who knows me but whom I don’t know merrily relates true anecdotes but leaves unidentified…the flower child talks with a jolly guy about Ray Bradbury’s DANDELION WINE, which she is purchasing…a Senior Games photographer buys one biker hat and several photo books…one table tennis champ buys a Kellerman mystery…one man scours the shop, diligently filling his I Oughtta Read These list…
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By now, you may be as overwhelmed and delighted as I am at all this blend of humanity and ideas and emotions.
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One good thing about being a metaphor hoarder is that I never run out of people and ideas to write about. All I have to do is reach into a pocket or a corner of the bookshop.
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There I will always find reminders of where I have been, where I am now, where I could wind up.
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There I will always find evidence of life, with its curious mixture of loathing, laughter, loving, languishing, lollygagging, lashing out, lullabying…and those are just the L’s.
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I am forever grateful for the things I do not overlook.
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I am always wondering what I do overlook.
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And I look forward to digging into a pocket or two to see what messages I sent to myself way back when…when I was an earlier version
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© Jim Reed 2017 A.D.