Today feels like fall. The sky is unbroken blue and the sun brilliant. There's a buffeting wind from the southwest. The leaves still on the trees that line Ponsonby Road rattle at me as I walk by them, and those that have fallen are gathering themselves into patterns and piles that lie at rest between unseen currents. It's invigorating and more than a bit exciting to be out on such a morning.
At breakfast, Jeanne and I had discussed our action plans for the day. She intended to take the day off from gardening, and to bicycle in the gym instead. I definitely needed to walk. A good, long walk. It may have been that some of that charged wind found its way into our apartment and acted as a tonic to my system. I felt energized. Chock full of ions.
As I exited our village gate a bit later, turned and headed down to and over the bridge, I decided I'd take a bus to Ponsonby Road. Each time I walk there, I find something new and interesting to admire. To enjoy. To photograph. To share.
Today was no exception. I found a bookstore.
"What? Hold it. Stop right there."
I hear some shouting.
"In the first place," one of you grumbles, "Bookstores are boring and they're a dime a dozen besides. They're in every mall in every town, and they all have the same stuff."
"Ah," I patiently reply to the skeptics.
"You may have a point about some of those mall bookstor.. No, no, don't tell me, let me guess.
I can see that you're bursting to say more. You want to point out that the Latin root, mal, means 'bad' or 'evil,' right?
Well, I've got to agree with you that it's curious how similar mall is to mal , but we can talk more about that another time."
What I'm telling you in today's post is that I found a bookstore of a different sort. This one turned out to be practically perfect. (McKenzie, you'd love this place. Fred would find it nearly impossible to get you out of it.)
It's an older home that has been converted. The rooms are small. There are lots of books, but it's not overcrowded or really even full. The lady who works there doesn't hover. There always seems to be yet another room to explore. (As fast as Fred is, he might have trouble finding you if you switch rooms frequently.) Best of all, the books are second-hand so bargains abound.
Take a look. I did find an excellent book to buy. It's one of my old favorites. I think I'll read it once again and then donate it to our Waitakere Gardens Library. I notice that they don't have any Steinbeck. I got it for a song.
“Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitant are, as the man once said, “whores, pimps, gambler and sons of bitches,” by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, “Saints and angels and martyrs and holymen” and he would have meant the same thing.”
-Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
If you've never read this book, I urge you to read it soon. You'll meet characters in it you won't forget. Characters you'll come to miss if you don't return to visit now and then.
Cannery Row is also a comfort, a balm, an indulgence, a destination.
Hmm. So is Ponsonby Road. -djf
