above: paperbacks and paperweights
PHILADELPHIA-A few weekends ago
Every year the Friends of the Free Library of Philadelphia hosts a sale to benefit the library. Available are books gathered and sorted over the year by employees and volunteers of the Book Corner bookstore and everything from pristine copies of Barbara Taylor Bradford novels to obscure feminist texts could be had for mere dollars. At least, that was the protocol many years ago when I worked at the BC. I happened to be in Philly for the last day of this year's sale. This year there were no painstakingly applied colored dots on the sale books and, sadly, no good books to be found.
Inside, however, the stacks remained as stuffed and wonderful as I remember them. The floor looks nicer and there are more seating nooks than before, which, even though I was asked out on a date by a guy sitting on one of them not four minutes into browsing the fiction section, I think is a great idea. It seemed that a few of the malignant folks who hung around the store have found other places to be bad people; even so, i regretted to find that my kickass purchases still helped pay the salary of the horrible, book-ambivalent, staff-hating woman who caused my quick departure after her reign of mismanagement and arbitrary decision making began. I guess dreams don't come true, at least in Philly.
Sigh.
In New York, however, the reading continues.
4 comments:
You haven't become one of those New Yorkers have you?
Philly is the city of dreams. Unrealized, yes. But still.
No, no I haven't. And I haven't forgotten those dreams, it's just that this one particular dream of mine remains unrealized. In fact, the very dream I had the night before I headed put to the sale.
What's doin' with you?
No, no, no. Philly is where dreams go to die...not to live! It's a strange thing that the city I love so much makes me so angry...well mayb it's not so strange.
Hey I got dreams here, but know that I've got to leave to realize them. I wouldn't have had them or met the people I'm planning on escaping with without this city. It's a great place that I hate.
Ask me in a month what I'm up to.
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