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April 28, 2008

1525: Great Works in Literature: Beat Not The Bones

There's a Housing Works near our apartment that Pete and I periodically stop in to check out. There's never anything in particular we want or need, but we like looking at things people have donated, and every now and then we find something we like. Whatever that thing is, we carry it around for a while as we look at other stuff and the chances of us actually buying it are 50/50, with the odds being slightly better when it's me who picked that thing out because I have some kind of condition that makes me a bit excitable about buying things I probably (or most certainly) don't need.

Who doesn't like a little consumerism from time to time? Buying stuff (and subsequently regretting having done so) is kind of a hobby of mine; so much so, in fact, that I will be spending some of my highly anticipated vacation donating (or throwing out) a bunch of crap I own and have decided is ruining my life. My possessions are probably not ruining my life, but I'll only be certain of that when I've thrown everything away and discovered that the pain of human existence persists... BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME. I'll be returning three pairs of shoes this week -- or at least claiming the intention to do so. Anyone who knows me personally will know that I am almost always on the verge of returning a purchase I began regretting while still in line to pay for it; these same people will also know that I almost never actually get around to returning anything.

It's some kind of self-punishing behavior, I suppose. I open my closet and feel overwhelmed with the kind of self-loathing that can only come from being a shopping idiot. The good news is that I probably have something you can use for a last minute Halloween costume; the bad news is that what I believe to be clothing, other people believe to be costumes. Thank God I have a professional life to keep me from veering into the fashion abyss I'd find myself living in if left completely to my own devices.

My work clothes are the real costume, but I feel like having to do rein myself in like this just pushes the crazy into some other facet of my being. I am slightly more deranged because I am wearing pants from Banana Republic - - in more ways than one, I'm sure. I feel like the suffocatingly boring quality of my pants cause me to talk to my rabbit in crazy voices and wonder whether my pockets make me look fat. I think they do, to be perfectly honest and if I weren't so fond of posing with my hands in them, I'd sew them shut.

In my mind, it's very Katharine Hepburn, but I'm sure the actual effect is nothing so dignified. I was in a meeting this evening and although I'd done my best to look business-y, I realized I had come in like three shades of pink or purple. Despite my Wonka-esque situation, people seemed to be taking me seriously which is kind of incredible considering I spend so much of my time thinking about how I want to sew my pockets shut. And how much I like to buy random crap other people considered throwing out.

Having managed to not fall in love with anything of the random crap someone didn't want anymore, I happened on a box full of books donated by some mystery fan who had evidently been struck by the same get-rid-of-all-my-stuff existential crisis I suffer with on a daily basis. There was some straight-up crap in there, to be fair, but there was also some straight-up AWESOMENESS. And by "straight-up awesomeness" I mean small, brittle old pulp novels with that musty book smell I imagine Crispin Glover's house to consistently have no matter how far you open the window.

Am I weird for thinking it's a kind of delicious smell? I know it's attractive to rabbits because Dewey has consumed the cracked spines and brittle pages of every old paperback within his tiny reach. To me, it smells like... I don't know... selfishly wasted afternoons? Mom sent you to go do something around the house but you were distracted by some book you found on the way and wasted time reading by yourself -- that's what it smells like to me.

Crappy old paperback books of a certain kind (and smell) are like candy to me. I like the yellow pages with their orange-tinted edges. I like seeing where someone before me has cracked and broken the glue spine. I love the total lack of pretention in the simple page layout and the font choice which you know was given absolutely no consideration prior to printing. What is that font anyway? I feel like there's two which you see most often -- Old Book Font #1 and Old Book Font #2, maybe. They're both so straight forward and unpretentious, they make me feel all warm on the inside. And it goes without saying that the tackier the cover on all of this is, the greater my enjoyment. So, you can understand my excitement when I came across this masterpiece...

My knees went weak! I went through the entire box and bought every piece of yellowed, musty piece of bookshelf magic and scanned their covers to share -- more tomorrow! Although I am on the verge of wrapping up another Cormac McCarthy book, I've been cheating on it with one of these delicious guilty pleasures since Saturday.

I can't resist shoes, or crap, it seems.

Posted by ashley at April 28, 2008 09:15 AM

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