Dismantling a Life

Moving on --

As I’ve gone about this past week, packing boxes and making trips from the ghost town to the storage yard, I can’t help remembering one of my son’s favorite novels from years back, Snow Crash (1992) by Neal Stephenson. My son’s reading tastes, once he reached adolescence, diverged quite a bit from my own, and he knew Snow Crash wasn’t something I would ever pick up myself, so on a trip from Leland to Kalamazoo he offered to read aloud from it as I drove. I love having someone read aloud to me! -- Though when he was younger and tried with The Hobbit (he loved it so much and wanted to share it with me), I always fell asleep. Come to think of it, our reading tastes diverged about that time, rather than later, as he was big into fantasy, science fiction, and horror (Stephen King his favorite writer for years), and I was not. But Snow Crash held my interest for the trip. Also, as the driver – it was morning, too – I did not have the option of falling asleep.

I don't have to live in this space -- just store "stuff" in it.

The protagonist of Stephenson’s satiric novel is named just that: Hiro Protagonist. In the real world Hiro appears as a pizza delivery person and lives in a storage unit. But has an entirely different and very glamorous life in virtual reality, where his avatar is a warrior prince. Snow Crash has been called “smart, cool, funny, witty, and action-packed,” “mind-altering,” “bizarre, outrageous,” etc., etc. Themes include (this from another online site) “history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, cryptography, memetics, and philosophy.” (What’s not to love?) The plot involves (surprise! not really) a computer virus causing an “infocalypse” that Hiro (or rather his avatar) must oppose in the neon-lit streets of the Metaverse, and the mental visuals keep a reader’s or a listener’s mind jumping back and forth like Roger Rabbit on hallucinogenic drugs.

 

Not only do I recommend this book, I think I’d put it on a “must read” list, which means I need to go back to it myself. Doesn’t the plot, with its malignant virus, disinformation, virtual reality, and underclass life sound like much of our fearful world today? Is this our future? Did Stephenson think it might be? Do you think it might be? Written in 1992, this novel would be a perfect final bookend to a survey of twentieth-century American literature, in my opinion. (What novel would you choose to begin a 20th-century survey?)

 

I have strayed far from my intended subject today, “dismantling a life.” Thinking about my storage unit led me off on the tangent, but it was good to work an actual book into a Books in Northport post, n’est-ce pas? 

 

But, coming back to our sheep – 

 

After several consecutive winters in a modest rental cabin in an Arizona ghost town, the last place the Artist and I were at home together, the time has come for me to disassemble that life. ‘Disassemble’ was the first word I used in correspondence with friends. Yesterday, however, the word ‘dismantling’ came to mind, and I tried it out this morning on my hiking and dog-walking partner, who is going through her own big upheaval. (Coincidentally, she is moving back to Michigan -- not to my corner of the state, but we’ll visit.) She has been 20 years in her Arizona home and is also de-acquisitioning and packing, day after day. “Dismantling a life,” she repeated over and over, awe-struck. 

One Christmas, not long ago...

Very recently...

My once-cozy corner dismantled.

There are worse ways an established life can be interrupted and lost: bankruptcy, fire, tornado, war, exile are all tragedies that human beings around the world have faced throughout history. In comparison, my move is unbelievably mild: just empty bookcases, blank walls, in place of the formerly cozy, sweet little refuge the Artist and I had created for ourselves. 

“Are you sad?” a friend asked. I told her yes and no. I’m not weepy, let alone panicked or hysterical. I’m going about the tasks of moving one step at a time, one day at a time, in my most pragmatic, get-it-done fashion, which would not have been my modus operandi decades ago, but I am a calmer person now and more confident in my ability to weather life-altering episodes. After all, I’ve already faced the worst: my husband died. Whatever life throws at me now, I just deal with it.

 

Still, as a sympathetic friend, originally from Kalamazoo and now a dedicated Tucson resident with her husband for decades, noted about all the things I need to pack, store, or donate, “It probably astounds you how much you accumulated over these few years. And because you acquired them together, they are essential; each one holds a story.” It's true, and it’s amazing how certain, very small, and apparently inconsequential items evoke emotion-soaked memories. 

 

In addition to items in our living space, there are all the outdoor sights – the mountains, the valley, the coming of spring and the backyard bird visitors. Everywhere I look, there are scenes we saw together, and I remember our conversations about what we were seeing. So many memories! The Willcox Livestock Auction, the Willcox Junior Rodeo, ordinary trips to the library and post office, visits with friends in their homes and places of business. On and on and on they go, memories seemingly endless and beyond counting.

One among THOUSANDS of sights we saw together

Driving to Willcox this morning to meet a group of friends for breakfast, I thought of how often people say, “I want my life back!” What they mean, of course, is that they want again the life they used to have, the way things were in the past, before some terrible event occurred. "But just the good parts," one of those breakfast friends pointed out when I shared the thought with her. Right!

Assembly of "ghost town ladies," as I think of them -- such good friends!
 

The Artist and I had a five-year hiatus in our life together. We thought we had lost each other forever -- and not only what we'd had but what we'd hoped to have. Then, miraculously, we managed to come together again! “I’ve got my life back!” he said joyfully, and I felt the same. But it was more than that. We not only regained what we’d thought lost but built on it and enriched it and made a better life together than it had ever been before. We were even able – a blessing! – to grow old together!

Leaving Phoenix to come "home" to Dos Cabezas

I call it a blessing and a miracle, but naturally it required commitment, dedication, and perseverance through difficult times. Still, it might have been otherwise. We were very, very fortunate.

 

The truth is that life is time, and time takes all of our lives and dismantles them, sooner or later. “I’ve had a good life,” the Artist said often in his last months. So have I. We had a good life. And soon I will be back in my Michigan farmhouse and my Michigan bookstore, and Sunny and I will be welcoming friends to a different sort of country scenery. And that will be good, too. 

Can You Help Staci, Too?

Moving a bookstore is very hard work. Dog Ears Books has been in its present location for over a decade now, but I still remember every move we ever made – from Waukazoo Street in Northport (photo above) to Union Street in Traverse City; from Traverse City back to Northport; from the corner of Mill and Nagonaba to the building next door on Nagonaba (you wouldn’t think moving to a neighboring building would be so much work, but it is); and finally from Nagonaba back to Waukazoo Street. Lots of volunteers stepped in for that last move, and I don’t think David and I could have done it without them. We wouldn’t have had the courage.

Last week I shared a story on Facebook from my daily Shelf Awareness newsletter about booksellers whose move resulted in tragedy. Jim and Staci Stuart bought the former Books and More from Dorothy Dickerson in April of this year and closed for renovations, planning to re-open as Books and Brew on May 1. (That’s in Albion, Michigan, just down the pike a way.) Two days before their opening, they were moving a bookcase – and it fell on Staci, as a result now paralyzed from the waist down.

To make matters worse, because Jim had changed jobs there was a two-day lapse in their health insurance, so most of Staci’s hospital bills, totaling $177,000, are not covered by insurance.

I’ve said before that having a dream (such as owning a bookstore) is a lot easier than making that dream come true and keeping it alive, but I cannot even begin to imagine what Staci Stuart is going through, now in a wheelchair, getting ready to open her bookstore on the 4^th of July after she completes rehab and returns home this Wednesday, June 21^st.

There’s no trust fund or retirement pension behind my own bookstore’s year-to-year continued existence, but I have to send a check to this bookseller in Albion, facing challenges far greater than my own. It’s little enough and all I can manage from this distance. If you can help out, too, follow this link to see how to do it. 

Staci, an independent bookseller is never alone. We are colleagues in a mutually supportive community. It's just one more aspect of this life that makes the dream worthwhile.

Nightmares of Repetition

Many, many years ago, back when the minimum wage was $1.15/hour or less, I held a part-time job at the Lansing Civic Center. What our crew did depended on the event. For a circus or a country Western concert, we sold popcorn, hot dogs, coffee and soft drinks; for formal events we checked hats. Yes, hats. Even in those early post-Kennedy years, older men still wore hats. In cold weather, we checked coats, too, and if the weather happened to be rainy, oh, no! Umbrellas!

An evening in the coat check room involved one long spell of quiet, with little to do but chat and read, book-ended by two episodes of absolute frenzy. First came the rush of arrivals, with coats piling up on the counter almost faster than they could be checked in; we ran and scurried, arms loaded sometimes up to our noses with coats! That heart-thumping activity was followed by the lull of the event itself, interrupted only occasionally by a visit from someone needing something from a coat pocket or by an early departure. At the end of the evening came the madness of the exodus, men crowded and squeezed around the counter, handing their numbers over the heads of other men, shouting to direct us to coats and hats. Most tossed tips into the aluminum pie plates on the counter when handed their coats and/or hats and/or umbrellas. Tips! We never got tips during the circus when we were selling hot dogs! There was, however, a price to be paid for the “easy money” of the coat check room, because after such an evening came the dreams.

Any tedious, repetitious activity can infiltrate the dream state, lengthening a day’s labor and extending it through the hours of what should be rest. And so, back then, during sleep, the work continued, coat after coat after coat, hat after hat — until someone insisted that he’d checked a hat, but I could find no hat matching his number! Panic! Umbrellas went missing in the coat check nightmares, too. Because it is the dream state itself, not its content, that determines what will be a nightmare, what will roil the stomach, bring cold sweat to the skin, and send the mind into panic.

Last week and this, at my bookstore, my husband and I have been sorting books, boxing books for donation and recycling, moving furniture, loading some furniture to deliver to a consignment store, sorting books, boxing books, moving books, sorting, boxing, moving. 

How will the bookstore’s reduced floor space accommodate what survives the cut, and how can our best books most effectively be displayed? Backs ache, and legs and arms quiver by late afternoon. It’s exhausting. And then in my dreams, night after night, I continue moving tables and bookcases and shifting books, by subject, from one area of the shop to another. Was valuable inventory inadvertently scrapped? Oh, no!!! Panic!

The fun of transition!

From these silly, tiring dreams I wake in the middle of the night, unable to get back to sleep, and get up to read for a while, then return to bed for a couple more unconscious hours, until the packing and moving dreams again become so intolerable that they interrupt sleep. Morning. Pre-dawn light in the sky. Might as well get up. Sigh!

What would it be like to work for a moving company, for heaven’s sake? To do nothing day after day but move furniture and boxes? Would a person ever manage to have decent, interesting dreams?

This too shall pass.

Smaller view will mean more wall space

Long before summer arrives, the new wall will be in place and freshly painted. Pictures will be rehung and bookcases and tables of beautiful books redistributed. A new street entrance will welcome our customers. Everything will look fresh and new and welcoming.

Then, in June, I can start dreaming about sowing seeds and watering and mowing and weeding! If I’m lucky, I’ll also have dreams of exploring woods and fields with Sarah and of alfresco dinners beneath the linden trees with David and friends.

Violets will bloom again soon....