Shopping at the Lexington Street bookstore

Lexington street is two blocks down from Malaprops bookstore and cafe. Downtown Books and News, on Lexington, is the second half of Malaprops. I buy books there whenever I'm in Asheville. Usually the books i buy there are books I saw months before at Malaprops. I let the first owner depreciate them and I buy them for half the cost. I trade for them, too. Sometimes I trade books I've bought at Malaprops, me being the depreciator of the books, and the cents saver for someone else.

Today, I'm shopping at the Lexington Street bookstore called Downtown Books and News. Which is strange, since I am in a small town in West Virginia and there is no internet shopping involved. Only the stack of books in my living room that a month ago I set aside to take to Asheville as trading stock whenever we next get to visit there.

Technically, I'm cleaning house. (Which may be why I'm actually writing in my blog.) I'm home. And the house needs a going over. These stacks of books, these baskets of yarn and roving need to be dealt with. The kitchen needs something, the floors haven't met water and soap in weeks. And things need rearranged so all this fits better. I want to do this quickly so I can settle in to do what I really need to do today, which is Storyfinding.

About a month ago, in a trimming frame of mind, I cleared out armloads of clutter and stacked these books. Toughts of: I don't need that. I don't need that. I'll never read that. Where did that one come from and why is it here. --

So, today, I'm cleaning house. I get a couple of those big brown bags from Edith's store, with the intent of filling them with books to go, someday, to Asheville to be traded for other books.

These big brown bags Edith gives with her groceries are wonderful. I use them over and over. When I gather herbs, they fit in the bags so well -- big stalks of mugwort or leaves of mullein, and if I don't get to them immediately after bringing them home, it's ok. They're going to begin drying in those bags. The bags are perfect for the job. They've already brought home groceries. Groceries that you can eat without guilt. Things you know your health is going to thank you for later. Not only because of the ingredients and more importantly for what is not there (like pesiticides and high cholesterol content), but also because of what the three Priestesses of Edith's Health Food Store have put in there. Peace and Beauty and Healing and Good Wishes. All this in the groceries in the brown bags from Edith's store.

I like carrying the books into Downtown Books and News in the bags from Edith's store, linking Lewisburg and Asheville. Though they are linked dozens of ways already.

So today, I approach the stack of books. It shouldn't take long. I can get this done and get to work on a couple of Storyfinding jobs I've got to do. I've already drawn the charts, already read the stories in the charts, lit candles for the people to whom the charts belong, sat with their stories until I think I know them -- at least, in part. Now all I have to do is put all that into something tangible they can hold and see and know.

But first I've got to clear some clutter.

I pick up the first book. It's Jimmy Carter. Ok, I like Jimmy Carter, but I don't need the book. In the bag goes one book.

Then I fall in the trap. The next book is THE DIVINERS by Rick Moody. I open the book and read here and there. "Annabel calls her boss Minivan..." -- "That afternoon, Jeannie gets the order she's been dreading all day. Go deal with the Indian guy. He's in the empty office. No one wants to go in there." --"His mom! His mom" Coming into the room! His mom is beautiful! He fogets his mom is coming into the room and then she comes into the room, and it's a surprise and then here she is and he loves her. He fogets how beautiful she is, and then suddenly she is coming into the room to take him home,"...

And I snap the book shut but it's too late. I see that someday, when there's time, I need to find out why Annabel calls her boss Minivan and why Jeannie dreds the empty room or possibly the Indian guy and who the fellow is with the beautiful mom and why all the excitement.

Next, I open a book I know I don't want -- it's about Dream interpretation and I never agree with those. This one is called IN YOUR DREAMS by Gayle Delaney, PH.D. I flip it open, even though I know I don't want to keep it. I do so to make fun of it. But I land on old house dreams. (I'm way too good at Bibliomancy)The book has my attention. The author tells about Freud's cockeyed ideas about what they mean, but the author of this book does not agree. EVERYthing is about sex, according to Freud. But Jung, who is sensible, says that old house dreams are about expanding conciousness. And I knew that.

Besides which, the first time I can remember having old house dreams was in the week before this prophet named Randy Housh told me that there were other rooms I was exploring now (then) and that I'd tear down the walls and the boards blocking the doorways and I'd find things in those rooms I needed to reclaim. And I'd had that old house dream about the room with the pantry full of herbs -- floor to ceiling shelves with glass doors. A large white cabinet that filled a whole wall. And it was all guarded by a white snake. Snake is power. Once I found my power, I'd find the ways of healing. Simple dream. And this book concurred that this is so, that finding rooms you didn't know existed means finding potential you didn't know you had.

Anyway, the book didn't make it into the brown bag from Edith's store.

THE LEADER AS MARTIAL ARTIST by Arnold Mindell, PH.D. THE BOOKS OF GREAT ALTA by Jane Yolen -- I kept these for now. I've read part of the Yolen book and the other might be worth a read through.

The next book (HOMESICKNESS by Murray Bail) begins "Strange sensation then (August 26)." (A wow of a first line) "To finally have the turbines cut, metallic whistle dying in the ear, and that drumming of the horizontal holding them to their seats like a hand, replaced by sold upright pressure, realtive silence, of earth." It's a book about Thirteen men and women on a package tour -- except that wherever they go, nothing is as it seems.

This is one of those books that make you want to write. You read a line that reminds you of something else and you could easily take off with the something else. It may be the book, itself, is interesting too, but as a catalyst, it definately has potential. For now, it stays.

And there are other books to consider: Life of Pi which I've never read and I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE and DREAMING SOUTHERN.

I think I best wait until the moon turns a bit and I am in a mood to let go -- A stack of books here and there can be thought of as decoration in the meantime. Here are books that might stay to be read someday and here are books that stay because I've already read them and they are mine. And hopefully, this stack here will find comfort in a brown bag from Edith's Health Food Store while they are in transit to the bookstore on Lextington Street.

On second thought, the house looks fine and I worked through my weekend. I may take an hour or so this morning and read before I get down to the real work of the day -- Storyfinding.