The other day I took my daughter around to take some items to Goodwill, and since she is a teenager without a job and I am a mother who is feeling not so indulgent because of it, she also took some of her books to the used book store , and CD’s to the record store to sell. The book store Books and Memories has been bought out by a new person, a young funky woman, and the cashier was the bemuscled and tattooed guy from the locally owed video store that recently went out of business. The buy back is not great there. I however thought of my favorite author Loren Eiseley and found several copies of his book The Star Thrower and bought one. The place is alot cleaner and more organized, the owner not yet aware of each and every book as the previous owner was. The record store Sound Garden has a much better buyback program and she was able to sell several for a good price. I of course had to check out the CD’s and purchased a used Amos Lee (my new favorite) CD and a copy of Morrison Hotel, since for some reason the Doors are really appealing to me lately.
I nearly bought a Clash CD but Morgan stopped me, we already have it, my former husband bought it for her and once again I am struck by how poorly the ex knew me. He made a big fuss over the 80’s CD (Madonna, Billy Ocean, Michael Jackson UGH!) he made me and I was pretty much not interested because I didn’t listen to pop music at all in the 80’s. I put Elvis Costello on Pandora the other day and all of these great musicians that I did listen to came up…The Clash was one, the Smiths, Joe Jackson. I also remembered a few weeks ago how much I loved the bands Berlin, Missing Persons and Souixsie and the Banshees, the Moody Blues and other Prog. Rock bands, Bruce Springsteen, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush and Suzanne Vega. I also was pretty much obsessed with Janis, the Doors, and Bob Dylan. My friends and I also went out a lot and saw local bands, and had their recordings too. One of my college friends, Will who now teaches high school English and preaches on Sundays…posted the songs of one such band on Facebook, and it nearly brought tears to my eyes. Alot of really good times! And it is odd how many of us from college are teachers, or lawyers. I guess our liberal mindedness got us somewhere.
I am struck by how much the those 11 years of were really just a dirty basement window of my life…how much freer and more of my old spicey, saucey, juicey self I am now. I am like a used book or a used record. I’ve been sitting on a shelf just waiting for someone to take me down and discover all the treasure I have to offer.
