Frida

Is there a spiritual path without suffering? If Donald Trump was really comfortable with abundance, would he still be going for the comb over?

I see the movie Frida, about the famous painter, and don't like it so much. The pain she went through and all that painting that came out of her as a result is amazing. The amazing thing is, that it is true. I watch as she paints in different positions as she is ill when she is young and bedridden again when she is old. At one point there is a mirror above her bed that she does her self-portraits from. The movie really "soft sells" a lot of her story. The real tale is even more amazing. She had polio as a young child and that point is glossed over and merely hinted at in the film. I know I am fortunate to never have faced something like that. Frida marries someone whom she loves very much and he is so very unfaithful. I look up Diego Rivera's biography and discover that he was even a cannibal at one point in his lifetime. That was also mentioned directly by his character in the film but I thought he was just being sexy! I realize how lucky I am to be a single woman who never married a cannibal. My cat runs to the door as though timed by my emotional breakthrough and wants to go out again. It seems I do have my share of domestic responsibilities but they are small and furry.
My cat, who never went to law school, is a brilliant manipulator. He gets thrown out when he scratches something he is not supposed to. We keep him in at night so he does not get feline HIV. There is no vaccine for that yet, and the cat fighting usually leads to blood. He wants to go out at night so he scratches something he is not supposed to. I scold him. He runs to the door looking at the knob hoping to get thrown out. He loves to fight, and when I don't let him, he seems to suffer. Thomas can look very woeful appearing to suffer from great agony and then sleep it off the next second. I have to admire his flexibility.

The last sale for a few weeks is in the morning on Saturday and is very early. The snow was falling and it was wet. I have been out in the drizzle all day and look as wet as my cat who loves the rain. The temperatures were at freezing. The weatherman says that it is going to be icing up overnight and more snow in the morning. I cross the sale off my list of things to do since I will never be able to make the journey in that kind of weather. The sale is an hour-and-a-half away and I want to go. Part of me is too tired to go though. I wake up late the next morning with a cold and body aches. It turns out that my sister-in-law is not going to be around on Sunday which my brother forgot to mention. This means I am also the chef of the day and now the party is today.

I take a nice long bath, or I plan on one but the water runs cold for some reason that is not yet determined. I feel cold and my cat wants to go out. I throw him out before he scratches something he is not supposed to. The draft from the cold day makes me feel a bit more of a chill. I notice it is not too icy like the weatherman said it would be and I could have gone to the sale anyway had I felt better and not had to cook for a party. I hop into bed to attempt to warm up. Then it hits me. I don't have a cold at all! This symptoms are all allergies! Not the one for un-necessary suffering, I take an allergy pill, three aspirin, put several drops in my eyes and have some vitamin C for good measure. I could really use another nap.

The party is a success. I have more wine, coffee, fattening food, ice cream, cake and lots of good conversation. God, I hope I am not too decadent! I also have more aspirin and another allergy pill. Everyone keeps raving about my carrot parsnip soup. I thought it was "ok" and wonder if my taste buds are functioning correctly. Maybe I really do have a cold? The next day people are calling and talking about the darn carrot parsnip soup. "How do you make that?" they ask. When I tasted it I made a mental note not to make it again. I must have been mistaken.

Suffering... It strikes me as strange that people would need to inflict pain upon themselves at all. Simply living life has hit me with larger objects that I could bear to purposely subject myself to. I won't bore you with the obvious, since I have mentioned it so many times before. I won't even mention the time the bull was behind me and breathing like a locomotive with the sound of his hooves pounding the earth. There was not enough time to look and see what this was like. I was busy leaving and looking takes time. I did not take the time to get scared, think or any of those suffering paths. I ran and jumped for my life. It was a personal little marathon that is hard to forget. It might have even been a personal record, but there was no timer present.

Life is not all suffering either. Sometimes it is darn good and we can spend our moments happily running and jumping just as a simple challenge. As a matter of fact when I am going through the phases of death and review, I will probably note that I had more than my fair share of chocolate and sunny days spent outside. That is very nice. We all have the scars from our suffering and mine are not so bad or at least I have seen worse. There have been years spent at other businesses where I did not have a window or any light from the outside. These positions were not as long lived, but they were long enough. Imagine, that much of the people in the "civilized world" work that way!


Working is not suffering but book sales are not all fun and dancing. I once had a stack of books fall on my face getting a black eye. Another woman intimated to me that she had someone drop a book on her toe and it broke. (The toe broke... The book could have been a tragedy too depending upon the title.) She prevailed through the whole sale and bought her books. The physician later proclaimed her toe broken and taped it up. One man screamed, "DON'T TOUCH ME!" to one of the dealers who was flipping books next to him. In his lightly southern, slow but sarcastic nasal tone the dealer responded, "Sir, you should not come to book sales if you do not want to be touched." The rest of us laughed hysterically because it is true. If you don't like a crowd, the book tent is not the place to be. Everyone ends up being quite jostled with lots of polite "excuse me" notes being sung into the air. I noticed the man looked as though we were all laughing at him. He was suffering. I have learned a lot about human nature. I see one grown man push another and yell, "That is pushing... Look it up!'

They say you can learn from suffering and I believe I do, but I don't want to. I continue to express that I have enough character and I simply can't use anymore. I am not sure how much more character the others around me can stand. (Denial is suffering in itself and will always pop back later.) After a day of volleying for position, lugging 40 pound cases of books around, and nasty looks from the postal patrons behind me in line, I just don't feel the need to whip myself. Suffering is reading a lousy book or one with a poor ending. Suffering is a book without a plot if it is never broken out of or non-fiction with all the facts incorrectly presented as though they were true. Or maybe suffering is cultural like being Irish. My family is Irish and every time I see Irish films they seem to end with a lot of suffering still going on. Someone told me those French films often end without endings. Everyone just drives off at the end at the point that seems to be the middle of the movie to the viewer. I was disappointed enough when the guy in "Phone Booth" got away. Suffering is watching the whole movie and THEN realizing it was bad. That is why we have to change before it is too late.

I have been very sick, so very ill, that I could not stand it. I have also had times when I have just been plain, run of the mill, ill and just slept the whole thing off. There are people who drive me crazy and people I love so they can drive me mad. I enjoy one comment about a person who experienced enlightenment and was so wonderful until he spent a few days with his mother. Somewhere, right this very moment, there is a kid who lost their dog. I lost a few cats growing up so I know how that poor kid feels. War, death, pain and torture do not come out as the most fearful items on our nightmare lists. Public speaking does. Can you imagine that? Unless your public speech is in front of a firing squad it cannot be so bad... can it? There are acts so horrible, I cannot even begin to mention them. That is only because I choose not to but I am sure you are keeping a few of them out of your mind right now. We just can't stand to have them sit in our heads. I am just glad that, chances are, these acts have nothing to do with book dealing. I did read a few occasions of book dealers and enthusiasts being crushed by their own book shelves. Now that is tragic.

So I think the suffering is there for us and it challenges us to go past it and find the treasure and make it into a rare book. This is the book that always sells no matter how many times you buy it and how many copies there are available on the market. Everyone always wants a copy too or is looking for one. It never becomes a common book and is always unique to the reader so it stays current in discussions and in the media. They always have good endings. Be sure to secure your book shelves too. Mine are nailed to strong structural beams.

I have had plenty of great sales in my business days so far. There are sunny days when everyone is nice and there is a floral scent in the air. At one particular sale this month, I was the only dealer in attendance. That was sweet and I was able to take my time and read all the titles. At most sales, no one breaks there toe or gets a black eye as far as I know. On a majority of the days I get up feeling good and looking forward to the journey and a nice piece of chocolate. There is no way I am going to whip myself, especially on those good days, but if it works as well as the real stuff, I would see the point.

Kerry

I was wrong about waking up to presidential news. My psychic ability must have been turned to very low yesterday. I woke up as usual but the president, surprisingly enough, had not been decided yet. The news arrived later that Kerry had accepted the vote and Bush was the winner. It looks like Bush and Kerry will be keeping the same suits for the same occasions for awhile. There is no need for change yet. Change always comes eventually.

I think what you do for a living might actually change the way you appear. I love the epic of Dune and this story has a great example of the evolution of the worker. This one aspect of the story always stands out for me. The navigators spend their life so dedicated to their work and art of navigation that as they practice it, they transform more and more into their navigator form. It is not that they become beautiful to the eye either. They become worm like creatures suspended in melange gasses, the rare spice that allows them to bend space with precise accuracy and transport cargoes and creatures of many worlds.

I have been pondering my change of form after being ill, getting run over, and blossoming into a book dealer. I watch the other dealers around me. I never have had a problem with being a nerd and I strongly suspect we are nerds. We are not the most well dressed bunch of people I have ever seen. It makes sense for the position though. I don't wear glasses yet.

I notice that Bill has a little bit of a fuzzy point to his eyebrows now. I am not so sure he always had those. I remember the navigators in the first Dune film with Sting seemed to have that happen too in the beginning. I ponder my changed form. I am a little softer now in a lot more ways than one. I no longer spend all those hours in the gym and have the stripes down my abdomen. Martial arts class has not been so possible either. I notice that after so many hours of reading book jackets, thinking about books, searching and reading book "stuff" and a whole host of other activities that are more cerebral than they sound, I no longer feel like changing gears to a more physical activity. I would like to say that my softly rounded belly is due to chi, like I am told the Grand Master says, but I am almost positive the beautiful people would just tell me to carry it a bit higher. That where I can use it.

It was once required that I look great, youthful, and in full-fashion at all times. At one time I could be found in my Dior suit being beautiful somewhere participating in some aspect of scientific sales. I no longer require the great suit to lug cases of books weighing upwards of 40 pounds around in. They would not be the best choice for bending over or kneeling down under those dusty shelves either.

At a very crowded sale last week I saw the dealer from New York being swept along by the crowd. He was calling to me, HOW DID YOU DO!" he yelled as we are both being pushed quickly in opposite directions. "GOOD!" I cried back, then he was gone. No one could stand in one place due to the push of bodies struggling for books. Not even a man from "The City." The local Fire Marshall was apparently not a book lover. I had to check my books and found the only place with room... under the tables. I found friends in those dark spaces under the tables. It was a regular book bazaar of people originating from third world countries. It looked reminiscent of an old world spice market, only much shorter and with tubs of books in front of everyone. These people naturally knew to go under there? They seemed comfortable and at home, so I happily joined them. I only accidentally found my way because of no other options left that I could think of until I stooped to pick up a book on the floor. There the underground book community sat cross legged reading over the days take. I was dressed for the occasion in a sweat suit that could sit directly on the floor and almost anywhere else necessary. I had a realization under those tables sitting in the half light. It was the only comfortable space in the whole room. They say it is crowded at the top, but this is the only place I found it to be true. Any artist will tell you, it is really crowded at the bottom in most cases.

It is not so easy to sit on the floor at first. Seeing how someone takes defeat can make a huge difference about how another person feels about them. Watching Kerry smile after losing his dream, for now, I see him differently. He is graceful. I don't think he is "eating crow." It is really not so bad. I am looking from the point of view of being from scientific sales in Dior suits, getting sick, being run over, and becoming a book dealer though. The view may be different from up there. It is quite an accomplishment to be any kind of elected official, let alone ever even run for president... although my brother runs for president every time. I think what Kerry did today in his speech and with his smile can propel him to president next time. I was not so graceful in the beginning when the realities of my situation really set in and the numbness went away. I see a lot of potential in that acceptance of defeat and the ability to grow in a new direction into something else entirely.

Solomon

If I were sane, I would probably wish to tell you my story in a certain order. I suppose those who go around thinking they are sane would say to do otherwise is insane. I personally prefer the term "unsane." It is not so bad being unsane. Just like the classroom in the movie, "Pay It Forward," where the student answers no one expects anything from us because we are only eleven years old. (Ah yes, I sell all sorts of media besides books.) Being unsane is just as easy as being eleven again. You might even enjoy it. Being unsane works for all the best outcomes. I am just allowing my story to unfold in any way it comes out of my mind, whatever that state may be. In any case, I want to tell you about Sol right after I tell you about the chickens, which is directly after seeding my lawn.

I re-seeded my lawn the other week for the late fall spruce up. Grass likes the cook weather and starts well in the fall. When those other less desirable plants go dormant and turn brown, the grass takes over. Now, my neighbor has chickens. For some unknown reason Frank's chickens found their way out, ignored the open range of fields in their back yard, braved their front yard path past the rotweiller, and crossed the street. That brings them right to my lawn and eating grass seeds. How do they know? They just know because they are chickens. It is like being eleven. You are just being what you are. Just being a chicken must quite naturally bring you across an amazing number of obstacles to where the grass seed is. I hear they ate the cat food on their way home too. This story brings me to Sol.

Sol is one of the big book dealers that comes to all the sales and is from Long Island and does business in "The City." He is a tall, lanky man who buys a lot of books. You will recognize him by the fifty cases of books he has stacked around him or his big book truck . As I told one newcomer to the book dredging scene, "Sol buys more books than all of us together." He is a retired military killer and will tell you so. He must have crossed a lot of dangerous paths to find his way in life to being a book seller from Long Island. Now he also has book stores all over the world. Some of them have closed but he apparently has enough book stores to buy many cases of books at every sale. He travels far and wide getting up at three in the morning making the long trek with his two dogs that seem to enjoy the long rides. They must be his loving company.

I was telling my other book dealing acquaintances about a library sale run buy someone who might be a mad librarian. We were early and waiting for the sale to begin passing time with our tales. This lady was not angry, although maybe she was angry too. She is certainly not unsane either. In any case once Sol bought his books and packed his vehicle, she would not allow him re-enter the sale to buy more books. Since all of us are subject to her at the sale, we found this to be completely hysterical! We had never heard of such a rule. "You can only go out the door once?" One woman chimed in, "She just hates him." I dropped Bill an email to tell him about that "librarian's sale." "To quote Sol," I wrote, "She is a real pisser." Perhaps Bill forgot who Sol was but he sent me back a lot of very funny modified quotes from "Mose" (Moses) and some other well known people.

As one hardened book seller, Chuck, puts it, "If I were having a book sale at my place, Sol is the only one I would need to invite." We are at the sales reading and taking books, making our piles, covering them with blankets. Some of us even have guards along where people can get quite aggressive about "stealing" our more special finds. All the best and most obvious books fly off the tables during the first few minutes in the beginning, which really makes the book civilians groan. After that the more difficult mining operation happens. We read the titles and peek inside to see the editions. We may read a table in the sections we specialize in a few times to make sure there is nothing we missed. Jim recounts, "I am at the history section reading the titles for the fourth time, making sure that nothing is left, and then Sol comes and just starts 'flipping books' like crazy throwing them into his bag."

We all wonder how Sol sells the books like he does. Some books sell for a penny on Amazon and other online services. Even a dollar does not help pay the original cost of the book. I have even watched him buy paperback reprints of books from that "Petals In the Wind" series. There are about 100 of those listed online last I checked just for fun. Many of us ponder why anyone would sell a book for a penny and recite that old joke, "They must make it up in volume." But Sol is not selling books for a penny! We ponder how the overseas operation must be running and his book sales. He has a lot of people working for him and even assistants at the bigger sales to stack his many cases of books. He must have a lot more channels to send them though. I am guessing that Sol finds books like chickens find newly seeded lawns. It certainly looks that way.

Lots of older people watch us dealers "flipping" the books into our bags and make noise about not liking it one bit. I have learned by this point in my career... any career... not to wait for a job where everyone likes you. Is there such a position? I hear little old ladies complaining about "the book dealers." "They take everything!" they exclaim in disgust. I bump an older man and knock out some of his coffee from his cut. I say I am sorry but he cannot hear me. He glares at me. I am a boorish book dealer. These people buy their two books and go home shaking their heads all the more. If we were not there grabbing up all the goodies, they could have probably swung for three. I enjoy watching and listening to them just like characters in the play. They never think about that they are speaking against the way I make my living and how I am even contributing to their social security. They do not see past that one book they wanted to find today but did not. They must think I make a lot of money... if they did think about it and despise me for my work anyway. Their social security might even be more than my salary. Perhaps I envy them in their retirement collecting their checks and hoping things are ticking along properly. Despite being unsane, I cannot seem to qualify for a nice mental disability though.

Seeing the old folks buying three books and not getting enough collateral to ban dealers from the sale brings my thoughts right to politics. If they bought three cases of books at every sale, things would be different. We vote with our dollars sometimes and for this situation I am in, that is good. It is my livelihood. I am voting today, but only with my opinion this time. This seems like more of a gamble, since I ponder if I am some far off victim of Reaganomics who are as common as fifty-cent books. Could I be? I like Kerry and his views, but are they real? Are his views today simply designed to be elected for now? If he wins has he definitely has found some middle way like in Zen? He is not just the middle but both sides of every issue. I don't like all of Bush's opinions, but I am quite sure I know what they are. That makes a difference to me and I think I can get enough Democrats in other positions to make him walk a tighter line. This makes me smile. Life is an illusion in some ways. I go into my little curtained booth and vote and walk away from the procedure not feeling as natural as being eleven. I don't even feel as confident as those multicolored chickens running all over my front lawn after having braved cars and dogs. I will wake up tomorrow with a President. Will the President be one I know or one I don't know? Will I find the equivalent of the magic cat food on the way home?

Bill

Bill is the elite bookseller in my small town. I sell ten books and Bill sells one nice, pricey sweetheart of a book. When Bill has a really good day, he sells a nice historic piece that would be my salary for half the year now. He is a well-known antiquarian book dealer and he is great at it... A regular master of books who does charitable events where he can appraise a book without electronic back-up. He also has about thirty years of stock on me. I remember his store when I was in high school. He deserves everything he has and gets too, in my humble opinion. When I was down on my luck, he was a great mentor and went out of his way to me. Besides that, I believe he gave his all to put three children through college including one that needed special medical attention growing up. He has been out there fighting for the poor and oppressed and even helped out one of the new-poor, namely me. Bill has probably done more for this world than I can say.

Not all the dealers are so fond of the "internet set" getting in on the business or would lift a finger to help anyone trying to do so. All the dealers in many fields have watched their stock prices drop in recent years and are a bit bitter although resigned. Many have gone out of business to the big boys like Barnes and Noble. The rise of Ebay taught us about how much more stuff there was everywhere than we had ever guessed. I would love to have a walk-in shop, but those days might be close to over unless you have the ability to have a set-up with millions of dollars in stock like Borders. The economics of having a place to go and sip coffee as a local book store are too rough, even when you might possibly be mad. There are a few niche markets like the college towns where it is just a happy business to "squeak by" in. I have a dark book dungeon where everything is covered up looking like the owners are away on holiday and a bright virtual shop online. The only one sipping tea and coffee at it is me reading away at the thousands of book jackets and recording ISBN numbers.

This day Bill and I went to the "bag your own books sale," where an entire bag of books cost $5. We had to get up very early and drive off in the barely lit morning hours. If the sale really had 47,000 books as they advertised, that means that at least half of the books were still inside the building. No one would let us in there to see those. I left the sale after a while because of the crowd, my tiredness, and the necessity of waiting hours more for more stuff. I packed several mean, tight bags of books and just let them explode in my truck as I hit the bumps on the way home. Here I am, the new low rider with several hundred pounds of books packed into my car that has 147,000 miles on it. I never had so much mileage on a car even as a teenager. Sometimes when I take corners, I have to put my right arm up to stop the book-slide from my passenger seat. The brakes still work.

As I was driving home to my street I noticed all the road kill from the early morning was gone. I was thinking how all those critters got up really early to get all the dead stuff for their days meals. I pondered the thought of someone else's discards being gone through on the book tables by several hundred people and realized it was the same. Several of them would need the books to survive and no one was really using them anymore anyway. "If these animals who cleaned up the street were people, they would certainly be book dealer's," I thought and expressed to Bill. Bill informs me that, "Some of them are book dealers."

The vulture has become my book dealer totem. Some say there is so much emphasis on meditation, traveling, and ritualistic ways of finding signs and totems, that it is almost forgotten that signs come to us every day. The vulture must be my totem. Where I live there is a lot of nature besides the poor fur balls flattened in the street. Animals are always running around. I see frogs and toads when I am mowing the lawn. Deer bed in my back yard. Hardly a day of summer passes without me seeing a cricket or a grasshopper.


One of my teachers years ago was a Native American. She would tell us how she watches the birds and animals as she drives and they tell her things about traffic conditions. Now and then, she even gets a warning of a speed trap. This can be a wonderful thing, especially if you have got a vehicle with really fast hooves.


To me, it seems that sometimes an animal will act in such a way that is highly unusual. This is when I understand that there is a message for me. Recently, I had such an occurrence. I was just having the most wonderful day. Some of the 98 degree heat disappeared, and the weather turned quite balmy. As I drove down Lovers Lane, which is the closest road accessing anything that might be a route around here, a turkey vulture flew over my little blue car. This bird did not fly past the car however, he continued to glide just above the hood of my car. I took my foot off the accelerator and let my car coast too. The vulture stayed gliding over the hood for quite a while, which is very strange and I am not sure how he could figure out it was possible to accomplish. Finally he lifted and instead of gliding over the hood, he now glided directly over my sunroof where I could clearly see him. I took turns looking at the road and up at the bird, now accelerating slightly. Towards the end of Lovers Lane, we both turned off in different directions.


Some people might think that it is really bad omen to have a vulture flying over you. "Hey! I am not dead!" they might yell in their minds. Not yet anyway. However, I happen to know that the vulture is very special in many cultures and stories. A vulture can glide on the wind using very little energy. Sometime the vulture is also called the Golden Purifier since it cleans up what is dead of what is no longer used, preventing the spread of diseases to the living. It is also noted that the vulture does not take life to survive and it does not feed off crops. There is a well known story where the vulture tricks the trickster. It is one of the very few who has the kind of power to do this!


Striving to be a holy trickster myself, I was happy to see the bird and wonder what this message might be. Could it be about cunning and guile? Perhaps the message is to use the power that is already there just as the vulture glides on the winds created by the earth. This may be how I can continue to approach martial arts after my accident. I stepped out of the car at the post office and saw small cottonwood seeds swirling in small dust devils at my feet. The energies seemed to be telling me about current and flow. There were so many dust devils swirling on the pavement and everyone seemed to walk right past without noticing. They never even turned their heads to see them.


Things were flowing for me that Friday. I stopped at the health food store. All these people that I don't know smiled at me, said hello, and made nice comments. Someone loved my dress. Another woman wanted to tell me about what she had found. The cashier smiled and spoke to me. The man in front of me in line made nice conversation and the other man behind me joined in. Everyone seemed so happy. The winds must be blowing well. Soon I will be cleaning up the scraps at another book table. It is the way of the book dealer to make sure that any knowledge that anyone might pay for is squeezed out to the last possible drop before the book is less than a corpse.