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Life, actually…
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THE NEVERENDING STORIES AWAIT
THE SIDEWALK PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
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The old book shop is filled with charm and aroma and ambience and centuries of culture, all pressed together in comfortable intimacy and familiarity. This may be one of the few places you’ll ever visit where diversity is no longer an intellectual talking-point or an impossible dream. This old book shop is a gathering place for all ideas, a place where diametrically opposing philosophies co-exist with a smug sense of humor, a smug sense that all philosophies are worth no more than a palm full of puns sifting through the fingers.
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Old paper scraps and chips and shards and cuttings and flakes cover the floor of the shop, reminders that paper is vulnerable to age and wear. Among the ironies of the confetti scatterings are the ancient books, the books with pages still intact and white and durable. Old-time paper endures, these-days paper often consumes itself in acidity.
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One more irony. Even the fragile paper survives if it is nurtured and kept safe from ultra violet rays, deep humidity and heated dryness.
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So, what do we have here in the shop? Everlasting books, crumbling books, archival paper, disregarded paper. It’s a merry mishmash.
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“Oh, I love the smell of books. Isn’t this great?” a customer extols the virtues of the time-travel vault I call a book shop. I hear this exclamation several times a week from wandering nomads who cherish the past and the preserved present and the predicted future.
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So, each day I place a bit of book fragrance behind each ear, don my bookie demeanor, and spend the hours receiving books, searching for books, sprucing up books, researching books, cataloging books, pricing books, shelving books, answering questions about books, selling books, collecting books…and, once home, reading books and writing books.
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And, should I dare to visit the darkened shop in the wee hours, I can listen to the books breathing and resting and committing the act of simply being available and open to examination by those whose mysterious quests will bring them to the sidewalk in front of the shop door just before opening time, anxious to continue the neverending tales
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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.
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