The Booksmith
I find myself drawn to the Brookline Booksmith—to write, but to read as well.
“What do you mean?” My friend Ellen asks, and I tell her I’m re-reading Tuesdays with Morrie, as a prompt.
“You can do that in the library you know,” she says.
“It’s not the same,” I tell her.
This bookstore the heartbeat of Coolidge Corner — this and the art deco movie theatre across the street about open its most recent renovation. Both of these enterprises host throngs of people at a time when the world needs more such places. And so I sit here, doing my thing, overhearing parts of conversations and occasionally finding conversation myself even if it’s not why I come.
“Write? In the bookstore?” My friend asks making a face. I explain how I use my phone, and she nods. I tell her I find the iPhone works just fine, especially when you think about the people who write entire novels with their thumbs. My piece will be no novel, and yet I feel compelled to write it in this way, as if writing it among these shelves will bring a different kind of clarity.
The Booksmith exploded in size during the years of the pandemic. Unlike much of Harvard Street, it closed for only for a short period. The theatre across the street seemed to be closed forever. What do people want when confined to their homes? Books, puzzles, games. The Booksmith stocks reams of all three, while it took seemingly forever for people to want to sit in theaters again.
We used to see the Booksmith’s owner wandering around, re-stocking books and chatting with customers, but it’s been a while. Maybe I caught a glimpse of her the other day when she appeared for a sec to ask one of her staff for help.
“Come with me,” she said to the young woman busy rearranging the European travel books on the shelf right next to where I was siting. “I miss her,” I think to myself.
Exactly why am I here? What’s motivating me to read this little book in this place even though we have a copy on our shelves at home? Worse, each time I pull it from the shelf, I wonder if someone’s looking at me thinking, “Really!?! You again!” I treat each page with tender care out of respect for the person who will eventually buy this little gem, and barely open the spine so as not to break the magic spell a new book casts when lovingly opened.
“So you keep going back, to read more?” Ellen wants to know. “Yes,” I say, though Tuesdays with Morrie certainly could be finished in one sitting. That, I think, would defeat the point. I’m here to write more than I’m here to read, using this special book to inspire. I’ve written some other pieces while sitting here, but this latest experiment will be longer and more intentional.
Am I returning to the book that held my hand once before, through a teammate’s struggle with ALS some twenty years ago. I’m here again now when I find myself faced with a second teammate’s struggle with this same disease. I find hope and solace in Mitch Album’s celebration of life.
I often arrive in the afternoon, after short bike rides up to the top off Summit Ave. Feels good and right to end these bursts of energy here, when feeling especially alive and present. These are precious moments when I slow down for a sec to take in the world, one page and word at a time. “How long would it take to read all these books?” I ask myself, though hard to fathom given the pace I read. And yet they say if you read ten books on a subject, you’re an expert. People aways seem skeptical when I tell them this, but I believe it.
My writing sessions usually end with a quick stroll over to the photography books where I find solace flipping through books by old friends Diane Arbus and Annie Leibowitz. The Arbus book Revelations particularly moving, her images positively electrifying as her work calls attention to worlds we would otherwise never see. She took her own life quite young, but her images come alive when I look at them.
We are only here for a short while, what am I going to do with the time I have left?
“Everyone knows they are going to die. But nobody believes it,” says Morrie in Mitch Album’s book. “If we did, we’d do things differently.”
