Grand opening went so well last week, with so much magic, and I even sold $100 worth of books (even the reporter bought an Anita Shreve novel). Golden Egg has virtually flatlined since then, though. I have sold three Holy Bibles since opening the doors here, several versions, and may turn it into a bible store if this pattern keeps up.

Today is discouraging because the dollar store down the street is having its one-year anniversary sale and gala, with free treats and coffee, and the sidewalks are thronged with families hurrying there, passing by my windows and gorgeous displays by threes and sixes in a continual stream back and forth, and it's so strange, as though they wore blinders, they will not even turn toward the windows to look in, right down to the toddlers. Open four hours, and no one has walked through that door.

Sigh. Well, as I have said, I'll get through this. I say I'm on the ground floor here of a great Modoc County renaissance, a region-wide—nay, nationwide awakening of curiosity that may carry some few eventually to seek actual hold-in-your-hands books. Meanwhile, I'm selling CDs hand-over-fist online, and that plus online sales of the book inventory I'll soon add there may carry us through the potentially bleak weeks that may lie ahead.

P.J. from L.A. stayed an extra week on her property next door, and so we have a Thanksgiving guest. Duck and game hens, potatoes and pies, long walks and maybe a movie. A good day will be had by all. I wish the same for you. Love.
1:08:37 PM    comment []  trackback []  

I turned the light out early, 10:30, but I could not sleep, my head so filled with lists and frets, deficiencies and concerns. Finally at a quarter to twelve I switched the lamp on and sat up with a gasp, as though finding the air after near-drowning, and threw back the blankets, tumbling Greta and Apple, and went downstairs for hot milk and honey. I checked email, too, and my blog stats, and my heart sank to see them so diminished by my inactivity. I vowed to bring the sick machine home from the shop tomorrow night and keep it here, because evenings are the only time open to me for that kind of diagnosis and repair, and it makes no sense to have the primary tool a good 14 miles away at that time.

I noticed the bread dough I'd given up on in the cold kitchen finally had more than doubled, and bulged over the rim of the great enameled bowl like my own belly flesh spills over my Levi's, now I'm past middle age. I punched the dough down, and it shrank back, and I flipped it over and covered the bowl again with its loose lid, and, having drunk the milk, returned upstairs, where I finally opened a hardcover novel I've been saving to read for years, According to Queeney, by Beryl Bainbridge, and I was pulled in immediately by the opening description of the autopsy on the body of Dr. Johnson, and propelled from there into the flashback-narrative proper, until I knew I could sleep, and as I reached for the lamp again a white brightness caught my eye, and I turned to see the moon peeking through a gap in the curtain, all fuzzy, of indeterminate shape, because my distance glasses were not nearby and I have been reading and my eyes won't work that hard anymore.

And a gush of words spilled into my head then, and again I tumbled cat and dog as I ferreted a spiral notebook from a nearby stack, and a pen from the dresser, and began this post to you to tell of these minutes past, in the rhythm and language of the novel just put by, because this is how it works with me sometimes—another's paragraphs turn like a smooth key in the rusting lock of my creating brain.
12:01:55 PM    comment []  trackback []