Can you believe it? Even the body-less deer head we sold. Bye bye lone ranger. May you find your Ballerina in the doll house.

We sell fragments of plastic parts at Stevie General Store. Don’t say I didn’t say.

To the “guy with dentures,” without whom I will not get to use the word dentures as often as I imagine: your painting is way cooler than we are apt to receive, Thank You.
In return I unveil these words:

One Generation

Even with these dark eyes, a gift of the dark night
I go to seek the shining light

Taken from Sea of Dreams, The Selected Writings of Gu Cheng

This is Tomo. He is the life of our friend and landlord, Baowen. As I write, they are at the vet, where HY is serving as the life-saving vest if anything major is to happen.

Not a major operation, just scaling, my friend. Our friend is not yet inconsolable, but he appears so, does he not?

Here’s a young Jack Kerouac, looking vital in the streets of New York:

Allen Ginsberg said that Kerouac was “making a Dostoyevsky mad-face or Russian basso be-bop Om”.

And here’s Jack Kerouac 10 years later, on the brink of drinking himself to death.

My favourite:

Rebecca Ginsberg, Buba, Wife of Laundry Man, Pinkus

More photos in the series here. Lots of photos of William Burroughs looking thin-lipped and evil.

Top and bottom photos taken from aghersan‘s photo stream; clown on chair in store.

We have been surrounded by ruins this past week. Old things, old talk, old folks. The right word with the young is ‘collectibles’, but it’s ok, ruins is not ruined. The year 2010 is a special year for me. I’ve met so many old gentlemen and one old lady that the thought of throwing a party of sorts – to get them together – did actually cross my mind. Day after day our conversation went like this: “Should give the toy to auntie”, or “Must remember to give uncle the box”, or “must help uncle check the history of the chain”. I am inspired by the things they (want to) remember, so much to say I’ll let the thoughts settle in my head before you think I’m all dust.

Today or tomorrow should be a crazy day, we should be able to bring down 100 vintage pieces to the store. Plus plus plus the wonderful for the fast and curious.

And then some.

I turn to Mary Oliver’s poetry a lot, now that I’m not in school and school no longer reminds me how to read. School now reminds me of why I didn’t break the rules sooner. Maybe one day I can write again.

Here is a poem of hers, for those of us who run because we cannot fly.

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean -
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

The Summer Day
by Mary Oliver

Many times she takes the words out of my heart. Then I have an eagerness to be clouted by poetry, and in the next second equally let down by poetry. This ebb is not uncertain. It is certainty that frightens me.

So far no one has gotten both the pants and the blouse as a suit, why? Many are lovers of the breeches/pants, while a few silent personalities adore the blouse. I am waiting for someone to love the whole suit. It will riot.

Charles Bukowski, Pablo Neruda, Virginia Woolf’s short fiction, a Daniel Johnston book, a quick history guide for graphics, A.A. Milne and a couple of other poetry books – these are the books we have sold randomly. When the tenants upstairs moved away, we recycled some of their old cupboards into a mini bookshelf, fit for the tiny library of titles we have in store.

Is it not a wonder that a city such as ours does not have a decent secondhand bookstore anywhere? Sunny Bookshop or Silverkris do not count! And the names of other shops I forget are the same, all stocking bestseller or easy-to-read titles…

cos sometimes we do not want to buy new books.

Credits: (top photo)

If your photo lands up here and you hate that, please let us know.

Our dog will be two on Valentine’s Day. Here’s a shot of his everyday disgust when we go through the front door ready for work. HY’s ideal life is quite well captured by the top photo, a home where you can just about do everything with the dog. And what the dog knows you know. Yup, that kind of life.