Season of the Witch

Exactly one year ago I moved from leafy, suburban El Cerrito to the trash-lined streets of West Oakland where I live in what a friend charmingly calls a cement box and I call a loft. The trajectory from a single house to the shared ownership of a condo is kind of a salmon run—backwards by most standards—but then no one would ever file me under “Ordinary.”
.
If forced to use one word to describe the core principle of my personal weltanschauung, it would be: escape. I cannot stay in any one place for too long and I use “place” loosely to mean apartment, relationship, house, geography, frame of mind, or job. The one exception to this rule is: obliterating obsession. When I latch on to something or, rather, when something locks onto me, it is with a kind of rigor that is unbreakable, as though I am under a spell cast by a fairy tale witch. I believe my house years were a form of obsession in exploring the idea of home, something I’d never experienced and was intensely curious about. The enchantment lasted 17 years. Despite the long residency, I was, in other matters, perpetually in flight; more comfortable as a wanderer, more Moses than Henry Darger although I have much sympathy for Mr. Darger and his monstrous, introverted talent.
.
At not-quite-sixty, I have lived long enough to profit from some form of life review and can see a well-established pattern of destruction and renewal that has defined my years and provided them context if not meaning. Before Augusten Burroughs, whom I admire very much as an artist, won his private war, he drank because he needed distraction from his emotions. I obsess because I need to rub them raw and then run. Both are attempts at some form of control. And control, or the illusion of safety it brings, is important to those who grew up among alcoholics or other crazy people. So I surprised myself when I left a monochromatic, predictable suburb for the volatile intensity of a highly passionate neighborhood sandwiched between a freeway and the ocean. I was done with substituting living space for home. They are not at all the same.
.
For all its many virtues, Jack London has some serious flaws. We have a lot of police action nearby, it’s noisy and dirty. The air quality is noxious and the port is loud 24/7. Even more tiresome from a practical, quotidian standpoint, Jack London has no grocery store. I have learned the easiest way to get food is to take a quick hop under the bay through the Webster tube and pop up in Alameda, an island in the estuary where one is instantly transported back to the Eisenhower/Kennedy years with the exception of a spiffy new Safeway and a Trader Joe’s literally right next door to it. Crawling up the sleepy main drag of the town that time forgot, my new Acura transmogrifies into one of my mother’s enormous old, high-seated, cavernous Plymouth sedans from the 40s. They weren’t even new when we had, first, a mint green Leviathan and, then, a blue and white two-tone; both with steering wheels the size of a hula hoop because it took the strength of Hercules to turn a corner.
.
In this state of drifting reverie, I notice, for the first time in scores of grocery runs, a trim little shop set back from the street, its recessed entrance neatly bisected—half in slanting shadow, half in searing white—its slatted blinds drawn tight against the hot, late-August morning. I feel an instant vibration between me and that door which is open, but barely ajar. I have learned to recognize when I am being called and I am helpless to resist so I get out of the car to hop on the magic bus to see where it might take me this time.
.
A small, neat sign instructs more than asks me to knock, and I do leaning in to scan the shaded interior of Biche’s, purveyor of rare books and collectible first editions. The room, when my eyes adjust to the low light, is as I imagine would be Mr. Toad’s of Toad Hall: filled in that meticulous way that suggests every item has been thoughtfully selected and placed and, when room had run out, concessions had been made but, while space had grown tight, the perfection of neatness had not been forfeit. The bookshelves lining the walls reach floor to ceiling and are stacked in clean, orderly rows. The center cases are lower, made of richly grained and polished wood that captures and holds the honeyed hues of morning. Instead of the chaotic jumble of every other used bookstore I have been in, there is an immediately discernable principle of order that is so welcoming to my categorizing brain that I am flooded with relief and intense curiosity—a charmed mixture that always makes my heart sing.
.
M. Biche is at first nothing more than a detached voice from the center of the room telling me I may enter but, soon as I am fully in the shop, he rises from the concealing embrace of a circle of bookcases to greet me. The first thing one notices about M. Biche is that he hasn’t shaved in two days so that the stubble on his cheeks matches the cropped hair on his balding dome. He is fastidiously dressed in khaki shorts and a pressed Hawaiian shirt neatly tucked behind a brown leather belt with a shiny brass buckle. He’s not at all strange, but I get the distinct feeling he could go there in an instant. I feel comfortable enough to take a risk so I introduce myself with my recently-learned open sesame to the book trade. I extend my hand to him and say, “Hi. I collect.” At once the man and the chamber all around us are transformed as though touched by what Proust would call “the uplifted finger of day” so that everything shines in that exacting light of the transient intersection where truth and unconscious longing made manifest meet and open their welcoming arms to one who has traveled so long without rest.
.
I am made as welcome as the angels that visited Abraham and invited to browse as long and deep as I wish through two rooms of precisely arranged books of spectacular quality and presentation. My eyes spin in my head until the plums are all aligned and the jackpot bell rings while plumes of smoke blast from my ears. There is treasure everywhere I look. This is more than a used bookstore. This is a whole new level; a true antiquarian book store where every dust jacket wears mylar and every spine is visible like pretty maids all in a row. Patterned rugs quiet footsteps and give the open, clear aisles a cozy warmth rather than an intimidating veneer of ostentation. I like it here. M. Biche is a discerning rag picker, selecting only the best copies for his store. There are no broken spines nor did I see a chipped jacket and yet the prices are reasonable; certainly higher than at my neighborhood seller where the goal is simply to move product regardless of collectability. M. Biche is in the business of satisfying those of us who are in the thrall of book collecting.
.
I am curious about who such people are largely because I appear to be one of them—a late life surprise. The idea of owning a mint condition, first printing of all the Pulitzer Prize winning novels hit me with stunning force only this year. I have been swept into a community of rare and specific delight. It is one of those diversions that take a life and completely recalibrate it, providing new language, new associates, new routes through the stretch of years that remain. M. Biche is a harbinger. I must pay close attention for he is a guide.
.
“My first career was as a search and rescue pilot for the Coast Guard,” he tells me as though to explain his low-fat, swimmer’s physique and a sartorial style that hints at a military past. “Now I search out and rescue old books.” It is an occupation, I learn, that is not for the faint hearted. M. Biche explains that when he first delved into collecting, when he was a novice, he says pointedly and looking directly into my eyes, he became consumed but was without focus. He bought everything that he came across; there was no strategy. I shift uncomfortably and glance away to see what might be happening on the street, i.e., nothing. “I burned through a ton of money,” he says instructively, “To the point where it caused harm in my marriage.” He pauses for an instant. Perhaps he has not looked at this aspect of himself since the last time a rookie bounded in from left field. “I mean, we divorced.”
.
I may not be a Pulitzer Prize winning author, but I know the start of a terrific story when I hear one and did the only thing I could in that particular situation. I sat down and said, “Then what happened?” The answer, predictably in any initiation to a way of being or a spiritual practice, was that he acquired discipline. He transformed himself from an idiot to a savant. We talked for over an hour. These randomly encountered sellers are my teachers. I learn language, practices, conferences, bad guys, good guys, how to look for and recognize the signs of my tribe. I tell him of a book purchase I am considering and he walks me through the valuation process step-by-step, instructing me, shaping me. I leave having ascended a few steps in the order. I am no longer a white belt. As proof, I am holding a complimentary pass to the rare book dealer show later this month in Sacramento. I am M. Biche’s guest.
.
When I shut the door behind me and walk back to my car, I have the pleasurable feeling of having penetrated some membrane, of having stepped through some veil and entered non-ordinary, luminous space; of having temporarily left the mundane world for the numinous. They were there all along. My people. And I need not worry whether I have found them or they have found me. I am home.

A Worm Hole Grows In Oaklyn

Approached from the prickly perspective of hard science, there is no observational evidence for worm holes—those alleged shortcuts through the time/space continuum that can suck you up in one corner of the cosmos and spit you out in an altogether different galaxy, light years from where you started. Worm holes, like cosmic string or compassionate conservatism, are hypothetical. There is no proof they exist.
.
Thus, what I am about to tell you qualifies me for the Nobel Prize in Physics for I have discovered one such corridor in Old Oakland. The only math I know is how to use a calculator and some of the function buttons on Excel. Still, I offer as irrefutable proof this one fact: One day in the early spring, when I was exploring my new neighborhood, a shop so small I’d overlooked it many times beckoned to me and I opened the door. Wondrously, a universe fell out. I was quickly enveloped and now, tunneled deeply into an expanding, parallel reality, there is no turning back.
.
I am not the only occupant of five-dimensional space. While others find their entrée elsewhere, for me it began on July 11, 1960 with the publication of To Kill A Mockingbird--a book many would argue is THE iconic “great American novel.” With an initial run of only 5,000 copies, the book that would win the 1961 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction started modestly. Now, 50 years later, few copies of the first edition, first printing--what collectors would call a "first, first" or "true first"--remain. What makes this story unique to me and illustrates so happily the existence of worm holes, is that I now own one of the 5,000. The story further illustrates the quiet beauty of my raucous, littered, and fragile inner city neighborhood.
.
Fairy tales and myths have demonstrated for millennia that children are often born to families that are not their people but these children are, at a decisive moment, all called home if they recognize and heed the summons. One day, seeing a rack of paperbacks on a sidewalk near my building, I stopped to look and found myself in front of a little, used-book shop I’d not noticed previously. Stepping through the tall, thin doors, I fell all Alice-in-Wonderland through the rabbit hole. Like Oakland, the shop was worn down and gritty. It smelled of candles and old tea. As I examined the shelves, I could almost hear the murmurings of the many prisoners, vagabonds, desperados, lying cheats, private dicks and their jezebel dames, sailors, cops, robbers, explorers, and drunken fuck ups pressed between the boards of ravaged and discarded books.
.
Amid this debris, sat Harper Lee’s paean to small town life in the American south on the brink of the modern era. It had come all this way. Through the long corridor of half a century we had been traveling toward each other; making our way blindly but always meant to be. Holding the first edition of a classic American novel is exhilarating. Published at the dawn of the 1960s Civil Rights movement, the book expressed our longing for justice and eulogized our hope that we could arrive on the other side of hatred without violence. In later years, as each of the men and women who led us through that terrible reckoning died, I would imagine Atticus Finch, alone and defeated, walking out of the Maycomb courtroom and hear the black maid telling Scout, "Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passing."
.
Connecting to that day of publication, viscerally connecting not to the recollection but to the physical experience of a defining moment in our collective consciousness makes time fluid and easily navigable. It was exciting in the same way that a direct experience of the numinous is and, having tasted it once, I wanted it again.
I began returning to the book store regularly. I learned of other stores—crazy little hole-in-the-wall shops. Berkeley, California is the Ogallala Aquifer of used book stores—one needn’t scratch very deeply before they come bubbling to the surface; dark, filthy caverns of treasure staffed usually by one shabby and flea-bitten old, bald hippie who nevertheless pulls the clown fringe that is left on the sides of his head tightly back into a two-foot long pony tail. Do not make me talk about the finger nails. The blue jeans are appallingly grimy. Of course, they wear a vest and flower-patterned shirt.
.
I wear my most disposable clothes to shop these stores—not one good item, even the shoes. I should but do not wear a mask. One shop in particular is a health hazard and probably a fire code violation. The aisles are made impossibly narrow by overflow spilling from the double row stacks onto the floor. There can be no sure principle of arrangement amid such chaos and so I must scan each shelf twice—the books on the front edge of the shelf and the second row behind them—in about twenty book stacks that reach from the floor to well above my head. I drop to my knees to work the lower shelves and then crawl along the hideous kinky carpet on my hands and knees to examine the over flow while a couple of Berkeley’s many leftover hippies who may actually have read To Kill A Mockingbird in its first edition, haggle over the selling price of a large collection of psychedelic literature from the town’s heyday.
.
These men are of the surreal brotherhood of collectors—living in a parallel universe on the far side of the worm hole. They remind me of what my mother used to call Carney Folk, meaning marginally respectable people perpetually on the hustle. This entire community—buyers, sellers, the pickers who drive around the west in dust-covered rattletrap cars going from estate sale to estate sale, the lunatic fringe who one day show up with a carload of books some of which are worth serious money—live in a world of their own making. They occupy time differently—opening their stores whenever they feel like it, endlessly making phone calls, faxing, or stopping by because they do not know how to use a computer. But they are all idiot savants of rare books.
.
They know the market intimately. They can identify a first edition going back decades, before ISBN numbers and publisher statements made validation as simple as logging on to the Internet. Best of all, they are generous. Any one of them will talk to you about their work and the tricks of the trade. They are happy to share what they know and have taught me to identify publishers marks on the verso of a title page; what enhances value (a signed title page, a dedication copy) and what diminishes it (no dust jacket, foxing); and how to read catalog abbreviations in auction listings. My appetite for what they know is endless and, because time stands still in this world, they are willing to talk forever.