discouraging

as of late my posts are inspiring mostly just comments from spammers sending me links to porn sites. i think the spam robots can smell words like "sucker" and "without underwear" from very far off. looks like i will have to clean up my act or else it'll keep encouraging this inappropriate robot behavior.

this evening i walked across the street to the library, where they were holding a book sale. i arrived about five minutes before they opened the door and there was a line of about thirty people. it gave me a warm feeling of excitement that so many people would arrive early for a book sale. sometimes you feel very alone, and then something happens to contradict it. until the doors opened and the people in line streamed into the room snatching books from the tables and dropping them into their shopping bags, eagle-eyed only for first editions or anything of monetary worth. before i realized what they were doing, their greedy certainty unsettled me, made me insecure that they could somehow smell the best books and would buy them all up before i'd even gotten my bearings. but their idea of the best books were very different than mine. one man went around scanning the isbn numbers of books with an electronic contraption that no doubt calculated their true worth. i didn't like the frenetic energy with which these people jerked around the room and peered over my shoulders as i searched for and chose the books i would adopt as my own. they indifferently tossed the books they didn't want back onto the tables like fish they didn't want. back into the sea. i tried not to notice them, and slowly accumulated a small pile of books which i took to the counter where three white haired ladies with rulers and a cash box were waiting. they measured the spines of my books stacked atop eachother and charged me a dollar an inch. eight dollars. i got a beautiful hardcover copy of umberto eco's 'the name of the rose', a new thesaurus, a book of poems by peter gizzi, a jerzy kosinski novel i haven't read, a book of wild bird food recipes, a book by e.b. white titled "the points of my compass," two books for sophie, and a little italian cookbook with striking linoleum cut illustrations which i will scan maybe tomorrow or the next day and put some of them up here with a recipe or two. i walked home with my books in one arm. it had gotten almost dark. later, sophie and i sat on the back porch and watched the moon's eclipse while our hot wings cooked.