Hear Jim’s 3-minute podcast: https://youtu.be/xcpKRptHlRw

or read the transcript below.

.

Life, actually…

.

GIVE US PATIENCE RIGHT NOW!

.

Encroaching holidays give me an excuse to examine the ol’ Red Clay Diary for signs of intelligence past…in this case, Christmas past.

.

Here is an entry from more than a quarter-century ago. A long time gone. Another era. Lives passed by but always on call in the journal of your heart…

.

Well, Christmas runs hot and cold down here in the Deep South. The temperature in Birmingham will be below 20 for the next two nights—that’s cold for us Alabamians!

.

Will Phil (my philodendron here at the shop) make it through the night? Will our pet finch make it? Will water pipes freeze despite the fact that we’ll be practicing the trickle-down theory of thawed-plumbing-flow all night?  Will I be able to get the fire started without kindling, just to make us think we’re Christmas-warm in our century-old house? Or will I cop out and place a particle-board log under the real one to make it burn well?

.

Will my daughter’s car start in the morning or will I have to grumble-crank it myself?

.

Will I think kindly of all those people in other parts of the world who are roughing it in a deep winter with multi-footed banks of snow? Will they think of us as victims of tornadoes and prickly heat?

.

And will I have just the right book to cuddle if we get frozen in by one inch of snow (really—that’s about all it takes to shut down the city here under the right conditions)?

.

Of course.

.

Even though I wander among thousands of books in my shop, I do sneak a few home every night to rummage and ruminate through. Can’t get enough.

.

Maybe tonight will be catalog night. I’ll look at what other people might be buying for themselves…might have been buying for themselves a generation or two ago. Nothing in the catalogs will be as oddly diverse as the titles around me right now.

.

My book patrons and I—we the book guardians—wait patiently. As browsers pause and examine, brows furrowed, lip corners turned upward, what will they adopt? What will they carry home?

.

We watch patiently, fascinated by the mysterious process.

.

The suspense is beautiful and maddening.

.

O Book Cosmos, please grant us patience—and of course we want patience this very minute!

.

The Season is sneaking closer. Prepare ye for unconditional moments of pleasure blended with the jittery knowledge that each good moment may be jumped by a snarling unpleasant moment. But that just means that yet another good moment is preparing to pounce

.

© 2024 A.D. by Jim Reed