Worn Collars - Part Twenty-Two - "To... Beat a Maelstrom"

Worn Collars

Part Twenty-Two

"To... Beat a Maelstrom"

            Flight:  “Fleeing”.

            What?

            From what?

            Why?

            How?

            I know... it all seems so easy.  Just... pack up and go...

            To a distance planet in a distant galaxy a far, far away?

            That just doesn’t work out.  Does it.

            It was twenty years ago that I fled?  No... I’d only been ‘doing this’ (being of bibliomania) for, really-sit-down-and-say-it, like... fifteen years before I... fled.  I flighted.  Within bibliomania.  Consciously; my conscious choice.  It’s pretty stupid how that was arrived at.  Too.

            I was ‘hard ball’ ‘rare books’ as a dealer (“bookseller”):  The old book was pitched.  I knocked it into the ‘deep to the right’ ‘rare book’ stands (spine end out in a book room).  “Placed”  Over and over.  “No problem”.  Then...and too... off to one side of me was the specimen wonder lust... wanderlust... “of it all” that always said “HEY HOW COOL COULD IT BE TO HAVE A LITTLE CABIN WAY OUT IN THE WOODS LIKE THOREAU?”  “Yeah I could build that and go there and...”   That last ‘and’ was not ‘filled out’.  I never built a cabin.  Like Thoreau.  Way out in the woods.  And went there.  “And...”...:  The ‘and’ got filled out.  It just took a little while for me to ‘tag it’.

            Simply... the ‘cabin’ of the mind is not a place you build to go to ‘and...’.  You may ‘think so’... but if you do... do all that; build and go there... you will discover that... the ‘and...” is “NOW WHAT DO I DO?”.  You will discover that ‘being in the woods’ is a process... not a fixed end.  One moves through the woods.  Even the trees in the woods do this; come and go.  Perhaps the granite ledges of New England are the most fixed but even those, when one applies their ‘best Thoreau’ are discovered to be ‘alive’ with ‘process’.  I didn’t have any problem ‘with this’ or ‘noting this’.  I, too, ‘was already’ hunting for the skimpy supply of Thoreau ‘firsts’ (first editions) AND commercially trading in the “anything Thoreau sells’ market TOO.

            “LIKE... NO PROBLEM”.  I’d even sit a my desk in my book room and ‘check points’ (Parts Fifteen [A & B]) on “early editions’ ‘of Thoreau’ I... found.  “Like... No problem.”

            RIGHT?

            I have that damn book room... with the books on the shelves.  The desk.  The chairs.  I ‘sitted’.  The... yeah... the door closed?  Well... you know... not quite.  That room; the book room... the room’s door... actually ‘got taken off’ (removed) so that the come and go of the household was... and could always... and still can always... come by the open doorway and

            Well...

            Bug me...

            “While I’m working”.

            So what.  You’ve never even ‘sitted’ in your own book room.

            Or have you?

            Anyway... and obviously... this ‘that’ in the book room... is too... PROCESS.  It’s just that ... it is... “ahhhh....” a ...MAY be...; a ‘could be’... a ‘can be’... a very deep (deeply absorbing) process.  It is ... an... ‘as deep as you want to go’ process.  And it will, as I have attempted to divvy out in this essay, manage to ‘keep going’ beyond any self determined ‘end’ to... become ...the ‘bibliomania’ with you as the ‘bibliomaniac’.  A maelstrom.  Not everyone ‘goes there’ but... ‘everyone’ who is ‘got there’ notices when a ‘you’ ‘doesn’t go there’.  AND... there are many rungs on that ladder.  Too.

            Okay so most of the ‘caught in the maelstrom’ don’t notice that right off.  Sort ah... get there and... step off the train at the station and are... completely happy with that.  NO NEED TO GET TO ‘think about this’ “WHEN DOES THE BOOK SALE START CAN I GO IN NOW and LOOK AROUND?”

            Kind of ...life style.  This included the wife “want to clean in there sometime” the “YOUR ROOM”.  Face it:  Flee has already happened.

            After having a ‘the ponder’ of the ‘that’.  Sort of... and “tidy up a bit before you CLEAN”... you know:  “I’m gonna open the curtains dear”.  OK so your space is being violated it doesn’t matter because no one knows what any of it is anyway and they don’t care and as long as they don’t throw anything out your okay and I

            “THOUGHT YOU WERE DONE WITH THOSE ALL OF THEM HAVE THE COLLARS WORN THROUGH WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH THEM?”  That’s about Arlington St. Johns’ old shirts.  Remember; the housekeeper gave them to me.  I took them (Part One).  I said “I don’t know what I’m going to do with them”.

“OK?  Just leave  ‘em alone.  I know they’re there.  OK?”

            When you end up defending a ‘pile’ of a dead book collector’s old worn collar shirts mounded ‘on top’ of ‘some books’ ‘over there’ in the “MY” old book room from the household throw out committee who just had another “EVERY THING IN THERE NEEDS TO GO” kind of ...

            Every one calm down.  “I’ll PUT THEM OUT IN THE BARN”.  I did.  I still got a “WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH THEM?”

            “WEAR THEM”.

            “YOU ALREADY HAVE YOUR OWN SHIRTS WITH WORN COLLARS”.

            “YOU WEAR

            “ALL THE TIME.

            “But those were Arlington’s”

            “HE’S DEAD”.

            “Yeah... I know that.”

            There... is where the border is; the borderlands.  Of bibliognoste.  Of bibliomane.  Of bibliomania.  Of the book room.  Of the Maelstrom.  Of flee.  I went down into Arlington’s basement and took the... boxes of books he’d filled with his “I FOUND” ‘old books’ and... stacked up there from ...the day he ‘moved in’ in 1969 until the day he died.  I put them in my barn; a stacked fortress of boxes of books.  And I have not touched them

            “Since”.

            I didn’t touch the damn shirts either.  I mean:  WHO CARES.  

            But that is... my... flee.  Arlington had fled and, in the end, I took his flee; his ‘he and rare books’, and... piled it upon my pile of ...me and my rare books; my flee... and

            “Go from there”.  This included the... ah.... “CLEAN IN THERE”, “OPEN THE CURTAINS” and... the worn collars on the

            Book... man’s “WEARING THAT ONE AGAIN THE COLLAR IS COMPLETELY WORN THROUGH!”... just

            Like

            I am.

            That is the borderland I crossed into when ‘flee’ came.  The ‘my book room’ was just past this border and... on the other side.  I just got so I’d flop into my chair and... I was gone.  Am gone.

            Really.  It’s been thirty-five years... longer... actually... from the days I gave up the cabin in the woods, embraced the deductive logic of process and ...fled.

            So the “What?” of flee is to pass through the biblio borderlands often defined as “I like old books”.  “HOW?” this borderland passage is accomplished is a ‘many routes across’ ‘it doesn’t matter’ ‘who cares’ and they all go to the same biblio (“a box of old books on my back seat”) ‘place’ (the old book room) anyway.

            Anyway.

            “Why?” is defined by the “collars” of one’s “shirts” getting “worn out” “by all of this”.  This last; the “by all of this”... is the (flee) “From what?”.  That’s the dirty spot.  Or is it bigger?  A maelstrom:  “That’s the maelstrom”.  And I already defined that the ‘in room’ bibliomania is... a... maelstrom.  It takes a maelstrom to... beat a maelstrom?  Yep.

            Working with the ‘dirty spot’ ‘maelstrom’ is not pleasant, pleasing and prosperous.  It is a ‘loosing battle’; a battle lost by, at best, one ‘loosing with dignity’.  The check list of ‘dirty spot’ aggressions is endlessly long and myopic in minute detail.  Confining the subject to just ‘old books’, obviously the cardboard-box-of-old-books-in-my-car... dirty spot ‘is’... and therefore ‘thinks’.  Or is it ‘thinks’ so therefore ‘is’?  It doesn’t matter.  Remaining with old books and stepping up this ladder a very cautious rung or two.. one’s book room view of ‘is’ / ‘think’ may be ‘borderline’ ‘maelstrom’ by simplistic redundancy such as ‘shelved books’ – ‘spine ends out’.  That of the dirty spot maelstrom will often foist THAT (their shelved books) and... I (eye) of the book room maelstrom “must look” at this “my library”:  The... decorative... library.  “Do they think that I (eye) ...that fool be?”.  Too.  So tawdry... so... dirty... spot.  “I” “BOOKS BY THE FOOT” my shelves buy I so expect (MY) I (EYE) to dirty... spot... ‘is not’ too?

            Yuck.  And those are  just two tiny bibliomyopic... dirty spots of ‘maelstrom’.  Wonder that my collars are worn?  Wonder that I fled?  I flee.  I have to flee ALL THE TIME.  From this... maelstrom.  I flee to the biblio maelstrom of bibliomania.  I ...bibliognoste... my... old book room.  I do.  I hide behind my desk and

            Pretend.