February 11, 2009

Used Book Store

usedbookstore.jpg
I love used book stores, but
there is always that forlorn melancholy
Of knowing that one day your copies
of Arabia Deserta, Stock Photographs: The Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo, and
The Voyage of the Beagle,
will one day be jumbled amongst
someone else's cook books, Judy Blume,
and, God forbid, self help literature.

So I write notes in the margins.
I hide pictures between pages.

If I'm feeling magnanimous, I'll tuck a dollar near the good part of the story.

Sometimes I circle words leaving secret messages.

I see these things as little whispers
to the people of the future.
I want to let them know that
that these books too once had other lives.

posted at 02:23 AM by raul

Filed under: night musings

Comments:

02/11/09 09:32 AM

well written.

reminded me of a time when I was allowed to study 15 th + 16 th c bibles in a cathedral library over here, and inside one, in the very bowels of this priceless, gigantic bible was a long hair, the color of a red fox, I thought. I lifted it out, gazed at it in total astonished wonderment, and then carefully put it right back where it had been stuck all those years.. like opening a grave by accident.

02/12/09 01:19 AM

ha. I was just in a used book store the other day browsing through a first edition of Old Man and the Sea when several snapshots fell out. Pictures of a man and fish he had caught. I felt like that man had reached through time- i loved it. hope to find one of your books some day.

02/12/09 08:13 PM

that is the most amazing thing...
such a romantic idea

02/15/09 12:41 AM

Jesus, you are a corny sentimentalist.

02/15/09 07:41 PM

The nice thing about having a blog is that you can put your late night corny sentimental thoughts online to annoy people in West Hemstead who are bent out of shape by such things.

02/27/09 07:37 AM

This is too good, I do it now with my own books and when I pull one off the shelf its great to see some relic I may have forgotten about from a few years past, movie stubs, shopping lists, photo's, old greeting cards from relatives. Corny? check....sentimental? ehh, yup. I think its part of being a photographer and loving photography. no?

I am going to link to it from my art review if you don't mind...

www.hellomynameisart.com

thx!

03/13/09 12:35 AM

Looks like you're not the only one who does this: http://www.clusterflock.org/2009/03/lincolns-watch.html

04/08/09 01:12 AM

nancy,
"like opening a grave by accident"
is a beautiful thing to say.

raul,
this looks like a used book store on court street in brooklyn.
where is it?

a true used book store
such as the one you've given
(i feel)
invites such taggings.
such hiding;
burrowing.

i encourage it.
good show.

04/08/09 10:58 AM

The book store is indeed on court street... as luck would have it, a few blocks from the house.

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