Sarah's Books - Used & Rare

I feel like I'm writing an essay for the first week of school. I hope this is a bit more interesting than that, but when it comes down to it, it probably isn't... Finally I am able to load a picture: here is a small watercolor I made last week of the northeast corner of the house I stayed in. The windows and front porch face the sea and other small islands, and the scene changes with the weather as islands come and go in the fog. The house rests on a giant piece of ledge, and bits of this ledge are also emerging from the ground in the front yard. I'd like to be sitting on a chunk of it today. I'm still getting used to objects such as telephones and computers and cars, and even books, so bear with me, please, this week - I'm taking the return to the world a bit hard.

A good bit of manual labor seems to help a difficult transition such as this, so I've been hauling out and sorting and cleaning my books from the book sale the day I left. I did find a few happy surprises, but it's slow going and I came across a few charming specimens with skanky blue mold growing behind their otherwise pristine dust jackets. I carefully examine my books before I check out, but a few moldy ones always sneak into my boxes somehow. Yuck! They go straight into a plastic covered bin destined for the dumpster or the Goodwill, whichever I head for first. Poor old books. I rarely toss books out completely, but I don't want to pass on the moldy ones if I can help it. Some things are beyond saving, much as it pains me.

A bit of unrelated but happy news which actually makes me glad to be back in the world: my favorite living poet, Mary Oliver, is coming to Maine to read and sign books at the end of September. I'll close a few hours early that day and head down to get a good seat. Her poetry has gotten me through many a rough day. I've been browsing in Garrison Keillor's poetry anthology Good Poems (Penguin 2002), and in the introduction he says, about good poems, "You could, without much trouble, commit these poems to memory and have them by heart, like a cello in your head, a portable beauty to steady you and ward off despair." (p.xxi) That's what Mary Oliver's poems do for this reader, and I've memorized a few. Front row, if I can manage it. Back to the books...