Yes, it has been a long time since I’ve posted something.
Even my last few posts had been in my glass “break in case of emergency” box along with a liter of vodka, a luna bar (for protein), a Russian Passport for a Tootsya Woovich, a samurai sword, and a very detailed list of everyone who has wronged me. I just haven’t felt much like writing. So writing has joined the long list of other things I don’t feel much like doing:
THINGS I DON’T FEEL LIKE DOING:
1. Showering
2. Looking for an apartment
3. Wearing pants
4. Taking to people
5. Leaving the house
6. Getting up to go to the bathroom (do people ever get catheters purely for convenience?)
7. Exerting the smallest amount of energy to do anything at all…
Of course, I have been doing these things (…some of them…), I just don’t WANT to. I have the chronic Mondays.
But I have finally been inspired to write due to the horrifying fact that in the precise town I live in there one, count ‘ em, ONE BOOKSTORE.
THIS IS HORRIFYING! I live on the East Coast, outside a medium-sized city and there is ONE BOOKSTORE in almost a 30 mile radius. What is wrong with the world?
The thing is that deep down I have known this for some time, I just refused to acknowledge it. This is a temporary living situation for me, I’m moving pretty soon, but I’ve been here for a year and have been trying to ignore the cracks in the facade, but this just put me over the edge.
And what made me realize this was that I was at the bookstore (I repeat, the ONE BOOKSTORE, so that really slims down the possibilities) and they didn’t have the book I was looking for. Normally, I would hop in my car and drive 5-10 minutes to the other store. Or, even better, if I was where I used to live, I would walk 10 minutes and, BLAMO, other bookstore! But the fact that the only option was ordering it really made me sad.
It’s not just that there is one bookstore in my town. Oh child, no. There is one shared bookstore for all the towns that border my town as well. I want to say 7 reasonably sized towns that all surround a pretty large city. That is more wrong then glitter on a woman over 40.
But let’s examine something: why the hell AM I so sad about this?
First of all, I love to read. And I go through these phases where I just can’t stop reading, which is actually kinda great because I go through many non-reading dry spells. So excuse me for having a lady boner for literature and just wanting books at my fingertips!
Secondly, I love the experience of going to the bookstore. If I have the time I can spend ages in there just browsing, reading the first pages of a hundred books until I make my decision and then once I feel secure in the book(s) I’ve chosen I slyly sneak over to the magazine section and read trashy tabloids, which are perfectly juxtaposed against Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles (I do that on purpose) under my arm.
And lastly, not to get too over-the-top on this, but what does that say about the type of place I’m living in? Do people just not read here? Is it just not the thing to do? Of course, there could be a few small book-stores that only the natives know about but I really doubt that.
And I wonder if I’m the only one who cares about the absence of alternate bookstores. Maybe I just belong in a different era where not everything is a super-store (because obviously the one bookstore here isn’t a little independent shop) and there aren’t TVs distracting us from every other activity. And trust me, I love me my TV, I spend way to many hours drooling in front of it, but nothing can every detract from a good book.
The other day my mom told me she was buying the movie version of Gone With the Wind and the check-out girl saw and said:
Girl: I’ve never seen this! Is it good?
Mom: Yes, it’s a classic! But not as good as the book!
Girl: There’s a book…?
Shoot me.
Adventures of TootsieWoo 