(click thumbnails to enlarge)“You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It's just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.”
-Paulo Coelho
As a visit to my favorite bookstore in the world attested, it really is just a matter of paying attention to miracles.
They're right there staring us smack in the face day after day. It's only by sharpening our awareness of our own creative capabilities that they begin to manifest themselves. A recognizing of our own innate capabilities as humans to discern moments of the purest beauty and brilliant subtlety.
Case in point: I picked up a copy of the novel that the movie Requiem for a Dream was based on. Since I am a big fan of the film*, I decided to leaf through it...
*Side note: Even though it's definitely in my shortlist of best films ever, my first viewing experience of it was...um...not in the best of circumstances. Imagine sitting in the middle of a cramped 13-hour plane flight, reading lights dimmed around you, stale cold recycled airplane air wafting around you...and this movie (of all movies) playing on the mini-retractable LCD screen in front of you. Yeeeah. That was me. And it sure didn't help my ever-present flight anxiety.
But I digress. So I'm leafing through, reading snippets here and there. Pretty intense shit all around (I'm now seeing why the movie has the tone it does). Eventually I work my way to the back of the book, landing for some reason on pages 240 and 241. To my surprise, something is wedged into the crack between the pages. What else do I find but a flattened, yet perfectly preserved, 4-leaf clover.
What are the odds, friends? What are the odds?
On the last page of the book, there's an inscription from who I'm guessing was the previous owner of the book. Blow up the last photo to read their message. They even included a dope W.H. Auden poem on there as well.
Needless to say, I bought the book.
Felt it was too much of a good omen to just disregard y'know?
3 comments:
i love used book stores! i hit up the strand here at least once a month. 18 miles of books.
18 miles of books?!?! I think I'd be in heaven! Either that or book purgatory.
They have a good selection? Discounted?
http://www.strandbooks.com/
text books, the occult, used, fiction, film, plays, cookbooks, travel guides...everything your literate mind could ever desire. except last i checked, they do not have a single copy of harlan ellison's deathbird stories. BOOOO. i did find a slew of marshall mcluhan's books there though. it's like a treasure hunt.
discounted, yes. the used books are maaaaad discounted. or hella since you are west coast flava.
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