I've been dismantling my personal library over the past few weeks. At its height, I must have had about 500 books in all. Collected from the time I first entered college all through my years as a teacher and up through the last 20 years of retirement, I liked to surround myself with books. Among the more valuable volumes were those signed by authors at various bookshop readings, and a few things I traced down while doing specific research on the radio programs I produced. I once counted up 15 different courses I taught over the years, mostly Literature and social science classes. All has specific titles connected to them. Some of the most interesting or rare volumes in my library were gifts from people who knew my passions. So there were lots of history titles, fly fishing books, blues autobiographies, novels and non-fiction about thoroughbred race horses, and of course, lots of poetry.
I recently decided I didn't need to own these because, lately, they just sat on shelves, collected dust, and went unopened. Time to pass them on. There is a little independent bookshop in my neighborhood that has an owner who appreciates many of my books. I sold him most of my rare stuff at low prices so he could make a little profit and "get them out in the community" as he put it.
Some of my books have been places in about half a dozen little free libraries scattered all over town. Others have simply been donated to places that accept them. I'll keep about 100 books, mostly because they are too old, not in great condition or because I've annotated them either as a student or teacher.
Sometimes when I go through another shelf of books I find things stuck in them. When I worked in the research library as a student at UCLA, I used to find all kind of things as I was re-shelving books. A pressed fern, someone's notes or penmanship samples. Once a beautiful little card calendar from 1929 put out by Union Oil. The car pictured at the pump would have made Gatsby proud.
Yesterday, I found a bookmark in one of my books from a small bookshop in LA. It's been almost 60 years since I lived there, so that dates this little object. On the back of it, I'd written a poem:
What's in the air?
a fate mate?
Spring has been wet, Not knowing when to unwind Winter and
make the splash stop.
The ground accepts but changes color daily,
old candles burn like small pale songs,
Whispering when the leaves will fall, and when April
will not accept light, dry nights.
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