Loot

Thinking about shoes.  I don't often.  I own, I think, five pairs, including two pairs of expensive sandals I bought when we lived in Southern California.  Those don't get much use since we moved to the Great Northwest.   I own a pair of sneakers that likewise don't see the light of day much any more.  Mostly, I wear the same pair of clogs every day, rain or shine.  The manufacturer is Mephisto, a European company known for what might best be called, practical footwear.  Mephisto has stopped making my favorite clogs, which meant that a year ago I spent almost as much on having my shoes repaired as I spent when I bought them.  There's nothing to say for their style but as design, I think, there was much to recommend my clogs.  The most comfortable shoes I've ever owned, they fit perfectly my fat little hooves ( wear a 6 1/2 wide, in American measure.)  I mourn the passing of their production and wonder what I will do when my present pair become unrepairable.   

I know there are people who love shoes.  I live with such a one and I know plenty more.  I understand something of the urge, already owning lots of shoes, to buy more.  I like nice things.  I shop.  I don't shop for shoes much, obviously.  Seems to me one can only use shoes going outside, and I don't do that but of necessity so, no, not my thing.  But, shopping, buying?  I get that.  With me of course, it's all 'bout the books.





































My most recent acquisitions from the trip to Powell's in Portland now litter the floor of my office; some in neat stacks, some on my desk, and some stray volumes upstairs on my nightstand.  Not all are pictured here.

The dear friend with whom I've been book-shopping this past week has gone home and with him then that first thrill of discovery and purchase.  Now I'm left with what I got and the leisure to consider the lot, the loot.  That's a pleasure in itself.  Before I've really read a word of these books, I admire them; note the publication dates and editions, look through the illustrations if any, study the bindings and the design, and congratulate myself on having found them, on now owning them.

The prettiest things -- pictured above -- were a gift. I'd taken them from the shelf in the bookstore and perused them, coveted them, and, having read the price-tag, I put them back.  I did this more than once.  I made the happy mistake of showing them to my friend and fellow bibliophile, and then tried not to think about them again.  When we finished our first day of book-shopping and returned to our hotel, I was abashed and not so secretly thrilled to discover that my friend had bought them for me!  Bless his generous self!  (I hadn't hinted, I swear.)

It is a two volume set, from 1894 of Women of Letters, by one G. T. Meyers.  Never heard of the books or the author, but love the very idea of these short biographies of English women writers from the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries.  Mary Shelley might be the only author most people would know, but I'm excited to find brief lives of novelists like Mrs. Elizabeth Inchbald, and Amelia Opie.  I'm as excited to find, particularly in the first volume, women writers of whom I've never heard.  I love such discoveries!  New possibilities for reading!  New, old books to hunt for and buy!

I bought two stray volumes in library binding of the novels of Maria Edgeworth, "the Irish Austen."  I already own at least two of these short novels, but the rest I've never seen and so will have the treat of reading more of Maria.  She's a delightful writer, quite accomplished in her way, and this despite in many ways the rather oppressive influence of her father, himself a writer, with whom she collaborated and who saw to the editing and publication of much of her fiction.  Her work survives even his often heavy-handed parental enthusiasm.

Then there's a biography, previously unknown to me, of A. J. A. Symons, most famously the biographer of Frederick Rolfe.  Symons' book, The Quest for Corvo (1934) is a classic of gay literature in it's own right and a masterpiece of writing around the unsayable.  It is also perhaps one of the earliest examples of that modern biography that is as much about writing the biography as it is a book about the subject.  This biography of the biographer is by Symons brother, the mystery writer and critic, Julian Symons.  This would be the first of the books I bought that I opened in the hotel.  Fascinating stuff.

Then there's yet another volume -- with a rare dust-jacket -- of essays by E. V. Lucas.  He's a favorite of mine, a biographer and editor of Charles Lamb, and one of the last great practitioners of the Gentleman of Letters tradition.  I love him.

Finally tonight, there are four more volumes of Samuel Butler, and two volumes of memoir about the same.  I collect Samuel Butler, author of Erewon and The Way of All Flesh.  In all his loopy, Victorian glory (1835 - 1902) he represents the best impulses of the sometimes eccentric enthusiasm of that most enthusiastic age.    Can't get enough.

There were other books, books I'm already reading now, but I mention these here just by way of showing how my shopping, if less than thrifty, is still not so much a problem nowadays as it might seem, were I, for instance, to develop more of a taste for, say... shoes. 

I'll be reading these books well after my next pair of repaired clogs fall to pieces.  An investment then, better even than new slippers.  (I do love new slippers.)

Field Trip

Just some casual snaps from my most recent border-crossing.  My friends tend to be biblio-maniacs not unlike myself -- not sure why that is.  Anyway, this means that when I want to make our visitors happy, the easiest way is to pack the car with shopping bags and overnight bags, book a room at the always reliable -- and recently, beautifully renovated -- Mark Spencer Hotel, Portland, and head South for a day or two of budget-busting book buying fun.

Powell's has likewise recently renovated their landmark, "Burnside" location.  The results are both beautiful and in no way a diminution of either the the stock or the floor-space devoted to great used books.  No easy achievement, that.

For me this meant coming home with nearly a shelf of Samuel Butler books I'd never seen before, none of which cost more than fifteen dollars apiece, a Marchette Chute duel biography of George Herbert and Robert Herrick, "etc., etc.," as Yul Brynner used to sing/say.

Nothing makes me happier than that moment when, having collected up a heap of treasure, I retire with a friend to the cafe and review the day's loot!  The idea is always to put back a few things (in my case, one Defoe I already owned,) which makes one feel terribly judicious and well-budgeted, even as the orgy of book fondling and mutual admiration of purchases goes on through the afternoon.  Heaven.

Bless you Powell's, and all that sail in her!  You make entertaining so simple!

Daily Dose

From A Common Pornography: A Memoir, by Kevin Sampsell

IMMEDIATELY

"I went home immediately after throwing my graduation cap into the air. I locked myself in my bedroom and listened to music on my headphones, wondering what to do next. My mind was blank."

From Vodka and Squirt

A Caricature

Seeing the Sights

I was selected for three juries to date, but served on only one, both the other cases having been settled before the jury could hear them. The legal case I did help decide was not a complicated one, being a simple charge of drug possession, and as nothing ultimately was asked of us but to decide a matter of fact, rather than intent, the length of service was not onerous. I was much impressed with the seriousness with which even so straightforward a case was decided by my fellow jurors. There was a genuine debate, not only as to the particulars of the arrest and the resulting charge, but also as to the conduct of both the prosecution and the defense. Both lawyers were quite young, obviously inexperienced, doubtlessly overburdened, and we the jury found neither specially sympathetic. Neither then could claim the case as either a personal success, or as a high-point of jurisprudence. The defendant, a homeless man, himself an addict, who found drugs in the street and pocketed them, in plain sight of a police officer and other witnesses, was a pathetic figure. The jury asked the judge, not inappropriately, that he be treated with leniency, despite the fact that we had just convicted him. After we were dismissed, with thanks, by the judge, she encouraged us to discuss our impressions of the trial with both attorneys. Nearly all of us did. The defense attorney was taken to task for seeming to find little or nothing in the law that might have allowed us to find other than we did. Instead, she spent her time before us suggesting one unlikely scenario after another to explain he client's actions. None was as plausible as that presented by the cop on the stand. He had considerable experience of the defendant, seemed in fact to know him pretty well. There was no suggestion from the cop that he felt anything but sorry for the man he arrested. Impugning the policeman's character, when he seemed to like the defendant, and knew more about her client than the attorney did, did nothing for her case, or ultimately for her poor client. It was the young prosecutor however, who received the worst of it from us, despite having proved his case. I was far from alone in finding his presentation ridiculously overzealous. He had only to establish the facts with the more than ample evidence. He chose in addition to anatomize the defendant's character, suggesting a preposterous criminality and danger from the few sorry possessions in the man's shopping cart; holding up a few rather mildly pornographic gay magazines, for example, as proof, presumably, of the defendant's degeneracy, when they were clearly intended as something to be sold by the defendant to feed his habit, as were all the other sorry oddments in his cart, other than his few clothes, blankets and the drugs he'd found. Yet the prosecutor repeatedly brandished these magazines as if they proved some larger point. The irrelevance of all this, while evident to the jury, went unchallenged in court, as I remember it. We were having none of this in our deliberations. The one middle aged man on the jury who timidly suggested we might want to have a closer look, was shouted down. I've never forgotten what one of my fellow jurors, a woman of a certain age, told the prosecuting attorney about waving those magazines around:

"The only thing shocking about that stuff was watching you wave it around, with that sneer on your face. That was embarrassing."

I don't know what ultimately happened to the man we convicted. His was not the kind of case or conviction that makes headlines. I don't even remember his name, poor soul. Neither of the attorneys, I should think, remembers him any better than I do. I do hope the young prosecutor remembers what that lady told him after the case was done.

I went out wandering my last late night in Portland. I very much like the neighborhood where my regular hotel is, not only for its proximity to Powell's Bookstore, but of itself. There are always high and low on those streets, as there ought to be in a real city; fine and fancy places, full of well turned patrons, sitting on caned chairs, at tiny tables, eating gelato with dainty spoons, drinking coffee after midnight, and in the same block, or thereabouts, low gay bars, shaking with loud music, loosing happy drunks out into the street to hail cabs or to stumble, in affectionate knots of new friendship, merrily home. I liked the look of all of them, for the happiness evident in an unlikely, drunken hug, or the quite contentment of an attractive couple sharing an ice on a hot night. I like streets to be peopled when I walk them, specially at night, specially when I am myself alone.

I walked a good while and peeped in here and there without once stopping to partake of anything on offer. I was not hungry, but for faces, and didn't need a drink. I was, however, offered one. Just 'round the corner from my perfectly respectable hotel, are two others whose patrons have fallen away from such things and come at last to rest among the wicked, the disreputable, the poor and the pathetic. I confess, I avoid the block whereon these hard times seem to have settled permanently. There are drunks there of a less happy disposition, with less occasion to celebrate, than I elsewhere encountered. The wreak of misery rises in the heat around those doorways, and resignation mixes with despair and anger in every snatch of conversation one is likely to catch, avoiding beggars, on those sidewalks. My mood was such though, after my walk, that I did not notice where my walk had led me coming back, and so I stopped, to light a cigarette, just on the very street I usually disdain to enter. As happens whenever a cigarette is lit in such company, someone asked me for one of mine. Now, in Seattle, on the street where I work, I have long since learned to meet all such entreaties with a stern refusal -- as otherwise I would give away every one I had before I could light my own. That last night in Portland though, I was feeling expansive after my walk. I ponied up. A party of three or four forlorn men were arranged on the sidewalk, across my path, so to each in turn I offered a smoke. All but one took what was offered, and all expressed thanks. And one old party, his red face a bleary map of dissipation, wearing a dirty pink shirt with the word "Bitch" emblazoned on it in sequins, in his turn, offered me a swig of beer from his brown paper bag. I declined, as politely as I was able. It took some time to pass my lighter around before it came back to me, and in the interim, I was asked my name, and gave it. Two of three introduced themselves to me. The one in the colorful shirt tickled my hand as he handed the lighter back. Great friends, we might have been, had I had more than cigarettes to share. I wished them all a goodnight, as they did me, and I walked the block to my hotel.

Just at my corner, before the entrance to my hotel, a car was idling, quite a big, nice car, and quite a handsome, and handsomely dressed man of middle years, with a watch the size of sundial, idled against the car. I had to finish my cigarette before I went in, so I idled awhile too, not so near as to suggest conversation, but near enough to see that I was closely observed. Still feeling quite right with humanity, I returned the gentleman's gaze, and even said "Hello." Just then, what I can only assume to have been my new friends from up the block, evidently had some falling out, as there as a series of loud curses, ending in a shout and what might have been a slap. Something was pitched and broke. Then, silence. I turned back to the man on the car and shook my head a little, receiving a look of genuine disgust, before he looked down again to stare at his grotesque watch for some time, obviously impatient to be gone. As I finished my cigarette, my back now politely turned to the car, its owner and his watch, the woman for whom he seemed to wait, I correctly guessed, came out of the private entrance of a condominium, just up the street from the entrance of my hotel. She looked rather grand, if styled younger than her years might warrant. I turned just in time to see her skitter up to the car, and to hear the man curse at her, for keeping him waiting. She apologized as he opened the passenger door for her and she slid in.

"Why, in Christ's name, do you live down here?!" he asked her, not waiting for an answer, or closing her door, before he walked around to the driver's side.

"Nothing but drunks and queers," he added, smiling at me, before getting into his car and speeding off.

The only thing shocking that last night in Portland was the persistence of a sneer I hadn't seen in years. That was embarrassing.