The Irony

To whom it may concern:

Saturday night after a long day of shopping our favorite second hand stores, we settled in for the night to unpack two large bags of books we'd bought. While doing that, something happened, something simply spectacular, something I've wanted to do for a very long time, something I've dreamed about for decades but never, or very rarely, experienced, and never like this night. We managed a scene right out of John Denver's Poems, Prayers, and Promises, where, after talking quietly from the heart about the things most important to us, and passing the pipe around as it were, when I got to it, I opened a used copy of some collected poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and began to survey its contents.

For whatever reason, I began at the back and began sampling here and there as I moved forward. As I was moved, I began reading aloud to her. What a magical moment: sitting with my best friend and lover, in a dimly lit room, sharing thoughts, dreams, and then poems from this newly purchased volume. Such a state eventually lead us to quoting favorite lines from memory where we could, and searching for others online when memory gave way to the ravages of time. 

After surveying a few pages, I came across his poem entitled Haunted Houses. Upon reading it, I realized that, like second hand houses, anything we purchase used, including books - maybe especially books - comes with a history, a past, ghosts if you dare. Some second hand items are significant, like valuable antiques, others simply carry the impressions, scars, and spirits of previous owners. This irony was not lost on either of us as I read Longfellow's beautiful argument, so lucidly laid out in Haunted Houses, from a used book. It was such a mystical experience all by itself that I have to share a significant stanza with you. It runs thus:

"We have no title-deeds to house or lands,

Owners and occupants of earlier dates

From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,

And hold in mortmain still their old estates."

What a perfect experience: sitting in a used house, built and inhabited since the early 60's, reading from a previously owned book of poems, immersed, or should I say, accompanied by, not only the spectral spirits of earlier generations of readers and dwellers, but also in the authorial presence of Longfellow himself (Anyone unfamiliar with this author/reader union needs to read Walt Whitman who makes it a habit to address future generations of readers as being present with them. Longfellow, while not as explicit, does the same thing by addressing topics such as time passage, aging, and the impermanence of life and reality). We both independently expressed feeling the ghosts of this simple volume. If I might be so bold, I'd say that we ALL enjoyed a beautiful evening singing chants from Longfellow and others.

If you can, get into the habit of buying second hand goods when you can, and you too can encounter these same multi-generational spirits on a regular basis. Please don't think this is just for books, houses, furniture, pictures, and sundry housewares can have the same effect. All one needs is something durable with a past.  I can't think of anything more spine tinglingly flattering than being honored to contribute to the life of a piece of furniture, a garment, or a book, a place, carrying on it's history, adding to its legacy. There's also something comfortably right about it. So join in and add your emotional footprint, your energy signature, to the life of the tangible.

Until next time,

Contemplate the mysteries, and remember to breathe.

(Favorite Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 1947. Henry Seidel Canby, ed. Doubleday & Company, Inc. Garden City, New York. pp.276,7)