March 25, 2024
Just back from granddaughter’s team figure skating event in Burlington, VT. A weekend break, a road trip for Anya & me, and a chance to hang out with our son, who we somehow never see anymore, even though he lives 3 miles away. Somehow, when I’m in that crummy Best Western motel in South Burlington, crawling with teenie-bopper skater girls, I give myself permission to sleep and not think about ANYTHING else. It worked last year, and it worked this year. 10 hours.
Then I spent all day Saturday binge-watching DYNASTY, a documentary series about the New England Patriots football team on AppleTV, to which I subscribed on a “Free 1-week trial.” I watched the first episode before we left, just to make sure it worked, then could not get back on to watch any more episodes, or to cancel my subscription, because Apple told me that the Apple ID they’d emailed me 2 days before was “invalid.” So I borrowed Anya’s tablet, which I shoulda done in the first place. Forget what the Radio Sports Talk Morons say about the show, and who it favors, DYNASTY documents brilliantly the corrosive effects of power. Scott Pioli said it was like a drug. The first high… nothing like it, then it just becomes a matter of doing whatever you need to do not to surrender that high. And I’ll be stuck for the rest of my life with a subscription to Apple TV which I cannot use.
It snowed Friday night and all day Saturday, a late winter/early spring storm. Dropped about 8 gentle inches on us up in Burlington. Just added to the fun, the specialness of it. But Sunday morning, driving to Hampton, NH to pick up a War of 1812 logbook, it was nothing but slush and blinding salt spray all the way down to Manchester, NH. The storm had passed and the sky was blue and THE MORNING SUN HAD RISEN shining right in our faces as we groped our way southeast… dodging, weaving, braking and speeding up. Stopped for gas and went through a car wash at Anya’s suggestion. That’s how bad it was.
After we picked the logbooks up, Anya and I stopped for lunch at a charming little joint with lousy food. Then we drove by the boarding house at Wallis Sands where my family would take our measly summer vacations 65 years ago, my childhood paradise (and also the scene of my first reading of “Childhood’s End.”) Lard-fried clams from Philbrick’s market at the far end of the road, rock hopping, swimming and snorkeling at the mouth of Stinky Creek, the entire scene looming so large in memory, now in real time so small, so crowded, so overbuilt. Stinky Creek barely visible, “our” vacation house torn down long ago and replaced by a giant condo building, Maddy and Harold’s roadside restaurant rebuilt and mobbed with cars, the endless frightening marsh behind our house now just a swampy little patch. Then we drove north, to the pile of rocks marking the state park at the far end of the strand. I got out of the car there, swatting memories like flies.
Looking southward down the long curve of that beach I got slammed with the recognition of the dream-scene that marked decades of powerful dreams, from back in the days when I could dream. Why had I so often dreamed that beach from the perspective of the very place I was now standing? My dream progress wound down that beach, through a welter of events and years, looming figures and intrigues, down to the crescent of water at the mouth of the creek, where so many ocean dreams took place. Those waves!
So that, far from freeing myself from my past – as I’d been contemplating lately – that past, in dream form, looped around and caught me up somehow, standing there on the shore, looking down that long strand, Sunday, March 24, 2024, enclosed in a world in which that beach and the entire retinue of dreams were part of the same reality through which I was making my way – all the same space – in which there is no past to escape or present to escape to.
This morning I’m $3K into the cash reserve of my checking account, $22K receivables, mostly institutional, out more than 30 days. About $10K in debt, soon to be past due. Catalog fast that last batch of the New England collection, then get ready for NY. I’ve got half a dozen splendid items which, in a diverse, equal, and inclusive world, ought to get me out of financial trouble, allowing me to relax again for a week or so, before the next cycle begins.
Greg,
Good luck in NY!!!!
Jeff
Greg,
I think that all of us have a tortured side of ourselves which can relate to you and your stories. But…As for dealers putting out advanced lists; I understand your objection; but even when I am in the States for the shows; I like the lists….One reason is that I run as fast as a 64 yr old man can run preview night….then drag myself out of bed way to early for the shadow show and then don’t care if there is a Dunlap printing of The Declaration hiding in the booth of one of one of the many unknowledgable ABAA dealers after that. Probably in regards to complaining, we are on equal footing…just different grievances. Now a plug (if not allowed, my apologies and just delete this) My 9th single owner auction of “How History Unfolds on Paper from the Eric C. Caren Collection” is at Potter and Potter, bidding now online and ends April 18th. Largest of my sales with about 560 lots…will be both bargains, as well as head scratch worthy high prices as usual.
Lovely lovely intro- could have been an introductory pages of one of Gregor’s brilliantly written books featuring the inimitable protagonist Walkaway Kelly. But of course, at the core of the Gregor that we all know and respect and love, is the unique and irresistible Kelly. Gregor Gibson- Walkinto the swim and swells of the Maritime Book biz in which he is a specialist par excellence. (Caveat: Gregor and I are dear friends since Freshman year at college- 1963. Plus I love and read books and am a devoted Ten Pound Island Book Logger reader.)