pax luminaria

Belief is a funny thing. I often feel that my belief is a set of contrasts instead of affixed stars in the sky, in relativity to Jack, I was the heathen outsider, the unrepentant atheist adrift in nothingness and nowhere. To Rudy, however, I feel like a believer, my swirling, syncretic schools of thought, my awareness of my cellular structure as a vehicle with the capacity for more, seem like devout prayer to his black and white atheism.

I was raised in nothingness. There were casual references to God when I was a child. I owned a picture bible some grandparent or relative had given to me in a well-intentioned moment, but it was never discussed, never mentioned again. Our gods were the Minnesota Vikings and my mother's leatherbound edition of Portrait of a Lady. I learnt to worship at the altars of Dylan Thomas and Richard Feynman, and to be frank, I probably would've made it to those temples anyway. But we never went to church and I was overwhelmingly grateful for that. The weight of religion petrified me, a black lodestone upon my shoulders.

As I age, I find difficulty reconciling myself - the passionate teenager I was with the disinterest and cynicism that permeates my being and awareness as an adult. Somewhere, behind my ribcage and my viscera, I am still that shorn girl that drove out to parking lots of temples when I was under stress, hoping that somehow, despite my renegade status, I still belonged.

self-immolation

We talk about goals around here. Dreams, great expectations, Manifest Destiny. Boys and girls around me telling me that their life goals are to get married, start a family, maybe get a dog. I realize I am choking, clawing, goddamn, get me out of here. The midwestern desert goes on for hundreds of miles.

I have been trying to claw my way out of here for years. You know the score. Age eighteen, all set and bags packed and - how is it that I'm back here, age twenty-three? How is it that I'm still in my hometown bookstore and driving down the same old streets, my parents' house, that gas station, still working on the same novel - age twenty-three? Has nothing changed in five years?

Some things have. I learned how to love and leave. How to teach oneself to put on a brave face. How to even be happy. How to watch your world explode around you, your body take you hostage.

This time, I'm going to make it. I'm going to leave this goddamn city, going to take off for a hardwood-floored apartment in Chicago with Victorian wallpaper and paint underneath my fingernails. We'll sell shirts over the internet. I'll sew clothing, put together a show. Maybe I'll get good at the guitar or at least pretend to.

I want to set the world on fire.

lake people

Our mutual existence amuses me. I look at you, the way you sleep, the hair that falls into your face as you curl up on your side. You and I are paired kindly, lock and key, we drink when we're bored and look impatiently up at skylines aching to get away from our mediocre addresses.

I met you and knew you immediately. The impatience in the walk, the unsettled hands, the ability to light up over quality pop culture. I know you have loved and left willingly, chosen something in yourself first, because I have done so. What you walked away from and why, I don't know. But I know that I looked and saw complacency and chose my creativity and inspiration first, and turned on my heel and ran like hell.

I bet you're good at things. Good at living paycheck to paycheck. Good at convincing others to do things. Good at loving until your heart explodes. Good at running away to save yourself. Good at considering jumping off of bridges. Good at making love. Good at smiling even when you don't mean it. Good at learning how be happy anyway.

Maybe I forget that you are someone other than myself. I don't know. Maybe you and I will walk off into the lake someday.

the fare of bookstore workers

No, we don't have that book in stock. No, chances are that at the elusive 'other bookstore' you plan to visit, they won't have it either.

You'll just get it from Amazon.com? That's nice. Enjoy paying shipping and handling, despite my explanation that you could skip it here. Believe it or not, I'm really just trying to help you and not annoyed by your bitchy response.

Why don't we carry that particular title? Does it look like the walls of this store expand beyond known dimensions and Euclidean geometry? We cannot carry everything, thus the special order system.

No, we don't have 2009 calendars, they were discounted out inJanuary. But take a look at our 2010 calendar display up in the next few weeks.

That is a print-on-demand book, miss, would you like to order it? You'll look for it elsewhere? It doesn't exist unless we order it - that's why they say print-on-demand.

You're looking for a book. Good start. But you don't know the name of the author or title or even what it was about? You think it was blue and on the front table around Christmastime... in Scottsdale, Arizona? Oh, lord.

No, the third installment of the Dean Koontz Frankenstein trilogy doesn't exist.

The correct answer to "I'm sorry, that's out of print" is not "Well, can't you print more?".

It is also not "Can you check in the back?".

I am not a mall directory. Please visit the mall information center downstairs.

We have no Paperback section.

We have no non-fiction section. See Fiction? It's everything else.

For the love of god, don't walk around barefoot in my store.

I can only order the Anarchist Cookbook to your house. It's a non-returnable item, meaning that if you don't pick it up, we'll be stuck with it on our shelves. If 20 people do this, we have 20 copies to unload of a title that doesn't really sell.

Please let your kids know that making castles out of the magazines isn't exactly appropriate.

Then again, let yourself know that taking Penthouse out of its plastic and leaving it in the bathroom is ALSO NOT APPROPRIATE.

If you are going to read in our store, which we do encourage, please do not crack the spine, bend the covers, or dog-ear the pages. This is merchandise, not your personal library.

If you have a stack of books and cannot find where they go or are in a hurry, it is perfectly acceptable to leave them at the Information Desk or at any register to be reshelved. We thank you for this.

But please do not shove them randomly in the House Decorating department.

Books are not stools.

You need this book for tomorrow? This rarely-sold, out-of-popular demand book? Why did you wait until today? I can have it in 3-4 days. Oh, you'll look elsewhere? Even when I told you I could call the other bookstores for you? Good luck, kiddo.

Your college bookstore is the place to find your textbooks. We are a retail business, I won't have your Introductory Algebra book by Kaseberg on the shelf. I can order it for you. Oh, you waited until the last minute and need it for tomorrow? Tough shit.

You need a book of information on Norway geared for an eight year old for a report? How can I tell you these books do not really exist?

We don't price match. Or price gouge. The price is what's printed on the back of the book. The publisher sets that.

Put the goddamn phone down.

What do you mean it's ridiculous that I won't take this book back? You don't have a receipt, the book was printed in 1996, and the pages are yellowed. Do you really think I would have missed any of that?

We do offer a Big Green Discount Program, which is pretty awesome if you are a nerd like myself. Please don't take it as a personal affront if I inquire if you're a part of it.

If I push the program a little more, it's not because I want to exploit you - it's because you have four hardcovers and it's probably a damn good idea.

And no, sir, I will not discuss the stimulus package with you.

a manifesta, of sorts

You know me, either to love me or revile my company. My generally amiable nature, a sharp, dagger-shaped tongue. My intolerance for willful ignorance and for idiocy. I have a ferocious need for independence, a heightened flight reflex, and a quickness toward defense. I'm an aesthete, politically charged, and simultaneously a cynic and a believer in idealism.

You probably know the details, being born a soldier's daughter on the outskirts of a southern Bavarian city. How I moved from city to city, never in one place longer than a year. The Bible I was given and kept hidden beneath stuffed animals in the back of my closet because I was afraid. The divorce happened in 1994, one year after the great flood, when the riverbanks ran up into the streets. We came to Michigan like exiles the next year.

I have loved twice, each time relinquishing a part of myself, and each time retrofitting myself with some kind of cast iron armor.

My grandmother looks to desperate measures to stay thin, injecting herself with pregnant women's urine. My mother looks drifty. Sometimes, I eat fire. I modify myself, looking for some sense of reclaimation, as if this pale, tiny creature with the long white hair isn't my own, by trial or fire. I mark her, with ink and steel and dye, taking back a shoulder, hair, my ears, saying this is mine again, isn't it?

What is a lover? I am imperfect, the silent, sidelong stares, the willful impetousity, the need to drive off into the horizon in a fit of wanderlust and a new album, 'Where have you gone?' you ask, and I outright
refuse.

Our political markings maim us, you expect me to bend, to recognize the glory of personal freedoms and states' rights. I ask why socialism is a four-letter-word. Maybe I fall somewhere more moderate, it depends on the day, my transient readings, loyalties, realities, my great love for the next great.

I cannot express myself, cannot. Would trade my blood for eloquence. I would be damned by mediocrity.

When I die, I will donate my body to science. Take my ashes and build a miniature Viking longship, set me out to sea ablaze.

Should I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

The expectations creep up slowly, imperfectly, the heteronormative expectation, that creeping, crouching, encroaching madness. The glance at my hair, my figure, my looks, judging some outward value. Offhand remarks about children, marriage, the ever-present damnation. Lay here passive and be silent. You speak, and expect me to nod, mitigate my own beliefs, failures, colossal mistakes.

Where is my glory? My sexual predatory gleam. To have taken what I want and to lay claim a flag. The are footsteps here where my forebears have walked. My value is reestablished. Harlot. Wanton. Fanny Hill. Sometimes, I touch soft skin and make love in the dark hour before dawn, to say 'come here and be quiet'.

Afterward, we listen to Bob Dylan in the dark.

I walk home.

drinking with the nemian lion

I want you to recognize my brilliance.

oceans never listen to us anyway

"Here's what I think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird," said May Kasahara. "Everybody's born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What I'd really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person. But I can't seem to do it. They just don't get it. Of course, the problem could be that I'm not explaining it very well, but I think it's because they're not listening very well. They pretend to be listening, but they're not, really. So I get worked up sometimes, and I do some crazy things."
- Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle