Powells of Portland

I used to visit Powells to find books I didn't know about; now I only find what I know, and sometimes Powells has those books and sometimes Powells doesn't.

Does anyone read Beckett anymore? Besides me, I mean. Is there any writer who better conveys the notion that death is the most exciting time of life than Samuel Beckett, besides Thomas Fuller that is? A half shelf full of Sam Beckett books at Powells, but no Tom Fuller.

I took the streetcar named desire to Powells. I'd thought it would be fun, and it was and it wasn't. It was better exercise than driving my own car, but not as good an exercise as walking would've been. That's the thing about desire: the actual achievement, the fulfillment of an objective, whether it be sacred or profane, is never quite as satisfying as the desire itself.

Ideas about streetcars and desire are better left to philosophers. I'm more interested in poetry, the glowing enigmas of Nelly Sachs for instance, and her poem that ends with the line, "your fear has begun to shine."

Powells was packed--an early Sunday afternoon on Mother's Day. The Fiction section was crowded, superannuated with people and books that had lived long after their usefulness. As a newly converted fiction reader I'd made a list of books and writers I wanted to read, but there was very little room in the Fiction section to roost and test read the books I thought I'd like to bring home with me.

The only place where I could spread my wings, so to speak, was in Poetry. I started at Z and worked my way backward to S, where I found Nelly Sachs glowing on the shelf. She died in 1970 but left these beautiful poems behind, 'Glowing Enigmas', the way a moth or a butterfly leaves a trace of dust on your fingers if you touch its wings. This was just enough poetry for me, they'd find just the right trace amount in my system if I died tomorrow.

I then walked the grand staircase at Powells, up three floors to Photography, to see what I could find on Eugene Atget, whose black-and-white pictures of Paris lack the vibrant colors of real life, most fortunately.