Stephen King Redux

The Great Unburdening (a.k.a. Preface a.k.a Purpose a.k.a not really about libraries but certainly about things you find in libraries so just chill and come float with me for a minute or ten)

Almost three years after offloading nearly all the books in my personal library, I've decided to re-read every Stephen King book in chronological order. I used to own them all, but not anymore. I still have a few King titles that I simply could not part with, but the majority were sold to the Strand for nickles. I spent years growing my King library, but the more stuff you have, the more you are anchored to the ground. Personal libraries are great--I wouldn't be opposed to having one in some unknown future--but you pay for them many times over, especially if you move a lot. There were many things I used to value above all else (you should have seen my extensive photo album collection), but after recovery I took a good, hard look at all of my Things and found that the majority of it meant very little to me. I got rid of just about everything save a few truly treasured pieces (and yes, I still own a whole damn box of pictures). I've had few regrets since. It is nice to be eely free. I could pack up my car and jet within an hour. Will I? Probably not. But the option is delicious.

I do regret giving up my tattered paperback of The Bachman Books since King has allowed "Rage" to go out of print (for personal reasons, more on that later). Luckily for me, the library has a copy in storage. Here's hoping it is the complete Bachman books and not the revised version currently pissing off Amazon customers, a version that very deliberately omits "Rage." Some trick on Ebay is selling the same exact paperback copy I had for fifty bucks. Ugh.

But I am looking forward to the journey, especially watching as King's craft sharpens, the stories tighten, and his voice becomes stronger, more natural, deeper. There will be some wrecks along the road (o the horrors of his early female characters) but it will be my first sober read-through from start to now, and more than a few are works I've read only once or twice, which is good (I'm looking forward to reading On Writing again) and horrid (O God, 'Salem's Lot). It will be something else to revisit the King works I read to tatters, too, especially the works close to my heart (looking at you, IT). And there's no denying the pleasures of frolicking in good, solid horror during the Halloween season (which will of course continue on through the rest of the holidays, a great distraction from All That Mess).

Let the good times roll...

CARRIE (1974)

Tormented teen unleashes powerful telekinetic vengeance on a bloody "Night to Remember."

"Just like the white winged dove / Sings a song /
Sounds like she's singin..." unintentional Stevie
Nicks-inspired design. Dust jacket is doing what
dust jackets do--see the scarring?

Things get a bit muddled after the first few, but I do recall that Carrie was the second Stephen King book I read, and at the very green age of thirteen, right in the middle of my own tornadic maelstrom of pubescent horror. My mother's library--a large, lumbering python sandworming all around the house--consisted largely of sci-fi and fantasy novels: Heinlein, Asimov, Herbert, Jordan, Card, Cherryh, on and on. As a typical preteen, I rejected anything that Mother liked, so sci-fi and fantasy were bleh, westerns were phhpt, and soul music was ugh. But in packing and unpacking boxes over the years (we moved a lot), I did have a general sense of the inventory. One deeply bored day in the summer of 1984, I thumbed through her dumb library of space operas and fantasy bodice rippers and found one book that rung a bell. Wasn't this...a horror book? A scary, R-rated movie horror book? I don't recall asking for permission, but I probably did, and set about the breathless endeavor of reading my very first "adult" book full of sex, violence, f-words, and REDRUM. It was wild.

Back of the dust jacket, nice and chewed up from
too many moves across cities and states. 

Life in the early teen years being what it was--tortured? pubescent? the difference is?--it took a year for me to figure out that mom had yet another King gem hidden in the copious stacks of pew pew interstellar gang bangs and half horse immortal archers of destiny and whatnot: a slim little novel called Carrie. At the time I knew next to nothing about the movie (and was completely annoyed and grossed out the first time I saw it), so it was an entirely new story to me. And could I relate? Well, yes and no. I could relate just like every preteen girl could relate, but some girls could feel Carrie's pain far more personally and keenly than others. It is a delicate time, transitioning from a kid to a pre-woman, and while there are challenges for both boys and girls, there is something deeply sinister that rides along on the girl's experience, smoking rudely, flicking ashes, and leering without end. Sure, boys are super short for the longest time (cute! smol!), and some even acquire a yodel (adorb! squee!), but imagine being commodified like a car (at best) or meat (at worst), a thing to be treasured on a pedestal (two-dimensional, inauthentic, trapped), or rendered chum to be consumed at will, by eyes, hands, mouths, worse (objectified, cheapened, bound, chewed up, spit out).

Trashed jacket edges and a faded spine. In my days, the most
common (and cheapest) stamping was gold or silver metallic,
so it is possible that this started out as a shiny gold, but it's
a simple, ghostly yellow now.

For me, puberty was a thoroughly upsetting experience, often terrifying, completely gross. I came to hate every square inch of my body, this thing that had somehow beckoned unwanted advances from boys my own age to men old enough to know better. Walking down the sidewalk, out of convenience stores, grocery stores, shopping at the mall, the cheap shots came from any direction: wet kissing noises, whistles, various catcalls, indecent proposals, groping, massaging, and even assault. All of which were experienced under the age of fourteen. I may not have had a religiously deranged mother, but I knew the hot poison of Attention; the unkind gaze, drilling assessment, the snorts and giggles, endless whispers. And we all knew some real-life version of Carrie, too. Girls who were duly commodified and deemed unworthy, to be terminally teased, tormented, and devalued sexually. Where all women are expected to at least pass, break even, find some equal to weather the storm of conformity and tribalism, these lowly Carries wandered the clanging halls of public education alone, marked, stinking of rejection and suffering. I don't remember the target of this unrelenting cruelty at the junior high stage--I was frankly under siege in a very real sense, on a daily basis, and had little time to extend a thought or compassion to anyone else. But I remember the high school Carrie. She mostly tried to keep low and as far from the barking, dogging, flogging, sneers and jeers as she could, but the anger in her face was clear. She was trapped in enemy territory. No matter what she did, how she dressed, styled her hair, walked this way or that, it was wrong. And there was always someone ready to tell her exactly what a piece of shit she was.

I love a good design ethic, taking the same fonts and flourishes from the front
cover and putting them on the spine stamping and title pages. It is a truly lovely edition.

Why are people like this? Lots of reasons. Preteens and teens, though, are the worst of the worst when it comes to othering. They pull no punches, hit below the belt, scratch and blind. Reading Carrie for the first time was a balm on my spirit in so many ways. King got it so right. Are kids really that cruel? Yes, they are. In many different, highly inventive, deeply hateful, infinitely cruel ways. Are all kids like this? Of course not. Not all kids and not all the time. So many play the Sue Snell, at least laughing along in the moment, flushing with embarrassment in reflection. Is it because we are more like apes when in groups of like-minded individuals, flinging shit and screeching incoherently? Adults are literally doing this now in the in realm of politics so yeah, of course kids are capable of the same and worse. The mob rules.

But this is why Carrie's murderous revenge is so glorious, especially to a preteen reader living under one or many thumbs. I was too scared to fight back and didn't have telekinesis to launch my foes into the sun, but I did have my mighty pen. While it is no coincidence that I started writing the same summer I read The Shining, my foray into vengeance writing is the direct bi-product of reading Carrie for the first time. These mean little stories were short, unflinching, and brutally violent. Eventually I ended up tearing those stories up and setting them on fire. In the moment, though, furiously pouring my own rage and terror onto the page, it felt profoundly uplifting, even godlike. I used their real names. Unspeakable crimes were committed. For a bitter minute, there was some glimmering ghost of justice. A little time passed, I read and reread what I wrote, and grew frightened for my soul. I was still very young, incredibly impressionable, and ninety percent certain I was evil (remember, the self-hatred was fully formed by then), so that fact that such thoughts had come out of my head was too disturbing to bear. So adorable. I wish I could hug 13-year-old me, but she'd probably say NO HUGGING and I'd have to respect her prickly wishes.

No headbands but that's predictable for a first novel, first print. I can't
tell you when headbands transformed from an integral part of the
binding to a mere decorative flair, but I do know that publishers will
skip them as an unnecessary (if not utterly whimsical and fun) expense. 

Rough cut pages, super sexy trade level flair.

I wonder what my grandparents would have thought had they read one of those stories instead of the sexy song I composed during church and directed most heavingly toward a boy in the first pew. They were livid about the sexy song (there was touching and kissing and "knowing" in it, pant, wheeze) so I imagine they might have been apoplectic about the murder story. I was well into adulthood before I realized it was me who should have been mad as hell for having my privacy violated. Parents, don't do this. Because here's what: Throughout my teen years I was writing constantly: songs, poems, stories, journaling. I had many notebooks and always had one on me if the urge to write struck. I wrote some predictable shit, crazy shit, sexy sexy songs and poems, songs about witches and damnation and storms of justice and comeuppance and what have you, rhymed "love" with "up above," "glove," "dove," and so on...and I wrote straight up torture porn that scared even me. But in reality I was a good girl. I toed the line, I rarely talked back, and I was a people pleaser. Moody? Yes. Whiny? Sometimes. Smoked secretly for years? Sure. But I was a "good," "nice" girl. Your kids' writing might tell you something or nothing at all. But reading it and yelling at them about it (or having a third party yell at them because you are too much of a coward to confront the child yourself) is not helpful, ever. It destroys trust. And I must say, to be perfectly clear, that my mother never violated this trust. Ever. What a mensch.

Gorgeous full title page.

And totally see-through copyright page. This
may be a first print, but I honestly can't tell.
This may be the most scant copyright page
I've ever seen. No cip data, no publisher
data, and no edition or printing data. So I'll
just pretend it's a first edition, first print!

Carrie's mother, on the other hand, what a wench. King loves a crazy mama, and clearly relishes a big crazy mama blowout showdown, rumble in the jungle type thing, though it's usually in a parlor of some sort. I can think of three straight off: Eddie Kaspbrak's mom in IT, Frannie Goldsmith's mom in The Stand (you have to read the unabridged version for that showdown, though), and of course Carrie's mom, who is a living confrontation, ready with her tracts and bible, screeching damnation at pretty much anyone anywhere. Imagine being harangued and threatened both at school and at home, no safe spaces, toeing a line that is forever in motion, especially during the formative years of childhood. You'd set fire to the whole town with your mind if someone dumped a bucket of pig's blood on your head, too. Especially if you were a teen still under the thumb.

Carrie was never one of my favorites as much as I enjoyed it the first time around. Once I got into the larger catalog that existed by 1985 (some thirteen novels under his own name, five novel(lla)s under Richard Bachman but recently attributed to King at that time), there were far meatier meals on the table and his universe was expanding exponentially. At first reading, it seemed breathless and fast-paced, jumping from third-person narrative, to news reports, to testimony, to first-person autobiography, and back again, whipping from the present to the past and a colorful array of voices and tones. At this most recent reading (an estimated fifth since 1985) the cracks in storytelling are evident, but understandable. The first half of Carrie is more fleshed out and evenly paced, but as the narrative flips from one source to another as the events of prom night unspool, the pace becomes more and more frenetic. It's funny that it read so much more naturally when I was thirteen, almost as if the book was paced like the mind of a hormone-soaked teen girl under fire. Reading Carrie now reminded me of another King character, a writer of course, remembering coming out of his first novel "scarred and shaking" (or similar). I'll have to tag back to that once I come across it since I can't remember who said it in which novel or story (but I will!).

The "Book Club Edition" stamped in the lower right hand corner of the front
flap is the only real clue I have that this might not be a first edition and is
very likely not a first print, either, but I'll live in denial until someone tells
me otherwise. 

I nearly fall dead every time I see this author photo. It is
just...everything. The white jacket. The print oxford. The
Cool Dude Stance. The Bob Seger Werewolf styling. That
one lush, wild, gorgeous eyebrow. It is transcendent. Why is
this not always his author photo for every work forever??
(Author photo and cover design by Alex Gotfryd.)

This is why reading Carrie is so important to me right in this moment of my life. I don't know if it was the first novel King ever wrote, but I know it was the first novel he published. I am currently deep in the pages of my own first novel, feeling a bit bruised and a lot scared, but still invested, still digging the story, and wanting desperately to do right by it. Carrie has its flaws, but it's still a compelling story and a genuine page-turner. I hope that my own efforts will be even half as good.

Grade: B
Scary? (0-nope to 10-you will die): 3, so not really. Unless you have no sense of what teenagers can be like. I give it a three for the suspense factor, which is very high. Even though you know what's going to happen, it builds.
Warnings: Dirty birdy words, n-word, casual bigotry, Aunt Flo, ohuh, lots and lots o'death, general human shittiness.
Artifact: Beautiful early edition (print number unknown). Hardcover, red paper casing, glossy stamping, no headbands, rough cut, white endpapers, medium white stock. I always half loved, half hated the jacket: the type and artwork are very "70s-80s Stevie Nicks, white witch, watercolor"...but the woman featured is frankly too striking and objectively beautiful to be Carrie. This is the first King novel to jacket disconnect...and is unfortunately not the last. There have been some truly terrible misfires over the  years. Overall, it is a lovely, very well-made edition.

'SALEM'S LOT (1975)

Wildly uninteresting windbag gets the girl, loses the girl, speaks in long monologues about Stuff. Also there are vampires.

Woof.

If I were to make a list of every Stephen King book from very favorite to biggest butt barnacle, 'Salem's Lot would win the worst prize.

I have now read 'Salem's Lot three times. My first read-through was between 1985 and 1990, or between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. I hated it. It stayed pristine and untouched in my library, moving from one place to another, bookcase to bookcase, duly dusted but uncracked, making it all the way to New York City before I decided to pick it up again. Maybe I hadn't given it a fair shake? After all, I had only ever read it once and could not remember a thing about it, save that it was about (yawn) vampires. Maybe it's actually good! But no. Second reading completed (est. 2005, mid-thirties, still not into it) and back on the shelf it went. Ultimately it got sent off to the Strand with the rest of the library. I'm not even sure I got money for it.

Look, I LOVE an irreverent vampire story. There was a spate of silly vampire movies and books that dappled my teenhood with bloody glee: lots of whimsy, humor, gore, and cheap scares...bring it on! We all read at least the first two Anne Rice "Lestat" novels (I gave up after the second, but most didn't), laughed at the goofy idiocy of Once Bitten (I can still remember the chorus from the dance scene song, "Hands Off," God help me do not watch it unless you want to die of secondhand embarrassment but definitely watch it's so terrible), screamed and howled and immediately rewatched Fright Night (more vampire dance trance silliness here), and swooned hardcore over those sessy sessy Lost Boys (seriously, what's with all the dance/music scenes in the vampire movies, like literally all of them? Though I must admit "I Still Believe" has been on my permanent playlist since 1987). But there's a limit, ay? I can't really watch the Twilight movies, though I like the part where Edward looks like he's going to vomit the first time he sees/smells Bella. That's high comedy, son. But standard vamp? Yawwwwwn. (Oh, but we loved Grace Jones in Vamp, another funny, totally irreverent, terrible but memorable 80s stripper vampire movie.) But Dracula in a cape? Vampires in general? Vampires living in haunted houses on a hill? Meh. It's just not my thing.

On Point. Jacket photo collage copyright 1993 by Thomas Holdorf. Jacket hand
lettering by Craig De Camp. Jacket design by Peter R. Kruzan.

All the fancy endpapers.

Before proceeding, I must state that 'Salem's Lot still kicks the shit out of many, many bestsellers over the decades up until now. Easily. It isn't a bad book. It's a fledgling novel from a very talented, megastar writer. You can actually see him flexing his skills throughout, sometimes nailing it (so to speak), but frequently sweating out those metaphors and similes like he's trying to meet a minimum imagery requirement. It is very much a second novel sort of work. Not bad, not great, just is. In addition, if I am completely fair, I'd already read other blockbuster, titan titles by King by the time I read 'Salem's Lot. It didn't stand a chance in vampire Hell.

Ad page (or, Previous Works) updated to c. 1990.

What did strike me this read around (where again, I did not remember any of it, other than the fact there would be vampires, including a baby vampire) was the world building. It is one of the things I love so much in King's strongest writing: He can create whole, real worlds that you can smell and taste, places that you grow fond of, think about, wish to visit at least once if not forever. There is a real effort to create a place called Jerusalem's Lot, to render it real off the page. It is not as successful as later creations, but the work is evident. 

'Salem's Lot, like any aged novel, does grate in unsurprising ways, e.g. more casual bigotry, standard countryfried homophobia, and the Silly Smalltown Girl Who Lives to Be a Chapter in Some Man's Book. And of course the Hero Who Talks Down to Her. Upon reading through the first meeting of Susan Norton and Ben Mears, I stomped out of my room and announced to the house in general, "I remember why I hated this gd book." I'm not sure who King is attempting to create in his hero, but he reads like a more mature, less obnoxious version of Harold Lauder from The Stand. This is not a compliment. Condescend much, Ben Mears? UGH.

Now this is a copyright page. I was a reprint
manager eons ago. If memory serves, the
bottom line indicates this was the 28th
printing. At the next reprint, they would
remove the 29, and so on. Most mere
mortal titles feature a simple 10 count
(eg. 10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1).

The vampires themselves are an uneven bunch. For a very long book about vampires, there is very little vampiring going on. The best rendering, by a mile, is the first vampire Ben and co-hero Jimmy Cody confront at the morgue. She is a mother reborn, calling for her dead child under a mortician's sheet, and King's description of her supernatural strength and carnal malice is incredibly effective. The main baddies, Straker and Barlow, are mere bookends to the stronger, world building element of 'Salem's Lot. There's a lot of hinting around them, with brief though memorable appearances from Straker (an obvious predecessor to Leland Gaunt in Needful Things, shop and all) and a belated, fumbling introduction and exit of the Biggest Bad of the book, the unknowable Barlow, he of the slicked back vampire do and the most sassy burn letter ever written. I could not help think of Duncan Regehr (babe) in The Monster Squad (another 80s great, though you flinch when they say the "f" word), overacting his little Dracula heart out and having the time of his (undead)life. It's all just a bit...silly.

I have never seen Nosferatu in its entirety. I probably never will. At this point, I'm not sure why I'd need to except to check it off some nonexistent list, a.k.a. "100 Classic Horror Movies to See before You Die (Of! Fright!)". But I'll tell you what: Nothing in the vampire genre has ever scared me as badly as those flickering frames of Max Schrek as Orlock, especially when he's just STANDING THERE being a terrifying, otherworldly WEIRDO. I've always been a sucker for the Slow Chase (see Halloween, It Follows, so many others) and Max Schrek is like the Originator (Ain't No Imitators) of that creepy shit. To this day, it freaks me the hell out. If I'd seen Ol' Orlock as a kid, I would have had legit, yelling for mama nightmares. It would have imprinted.

80s Buzzcut King (Photo by Tabitha King).

Barlow could have been a lot of things, but in the end he was much ado about little if anything. And not very scary to boot. (Sorry, suckers!) Maybe if King had written him a seductive dance scene...

Grade: C
Scary (0-nope to 10-you will die): Solid 6. Others have claimed it's the "scariest Stephen King book everrrr" but it isn't. Very little vampire action and a "hero" who is very hard to like. If you don't much care what happens to the main characters, it's hard to get worked up about what happens to them.
Warnings: casual bigotry, homophobia, dead babies, undead babies, misogyny gone wild, sex scene where a certain someone says "Oh Susan."
Artifact: Library Book! According to the copyright page, this is the 28th printing of an edition put out sometime around 1993 (based specifically on the cover art credit cited above). It is a mighty hunk compared to my slight little Carrie volume and could easily knock a vampire into next week if you chucked it just so. Hardcover, black paper casing, metallic red stamping, red headbands, flat cut, red endpapers, heavy cream stock. It's hard to tell through the heavy plastic film that protects the book from unsavory elements (patrons! o susan!), but the cover appears to be 5-color, CMYK plus metallic. I am probably remembering that wrong, but either way, super fancy for what comes out looking more sepia than anything. In any case, the cover art itself is truly inspired, spooky and beautiful, with the back cover imagery clearly evoking the Catholic Church juxtaposed against the front cover's haunted Marsten house, both ensnared in deep thickets. A lovely and fitting artifact, indeed.

Up Next: Come play with us, Danneeeeeeeeee...




But seriously. This Guy.

Gah.

GAAAHHH.

Nope.         No.

[dead] [un]

Five Years

Time is relative. We all know that. If you don't know it yet, you will. My aversion to shopping is based on many things, but the foundation was laid during shopping excursions when I was but a wee babe being figuratively (sometimes literally) dragged from one boring store to the next, no one to play with, nothing to do, no end in sight. Can't play in the clothes racks, can't play with the jewelry stand, can't play behind the register. Just sit still, be quiet, and behave. Is it any wonder kids consistently melt all the way down to the core on shopping trips? I can remember the boredom, the horrible keening inside to just GO, LEAVE, do something else, anything else, even run screaming into traffic maybe, just get me OUT of this SEARS store NOW. It was interminable.

And yet, here I am, aged. Kids will be kids, ever in the present, but the older you get, the closer you come to understanding the fickle pickle of Time. How it crawls at an uninspiring job, how it races at a roller rink. Pick your own, those are mine. How many times did I stand at the edge of the skating rink and beg for just one more lap pllleeeeaaaaase mom please, two more, three more. And how infinite time must have felt for her as she sat there and watched me zoom around again and again, music bopping, lights dancing, the acrid reek of concessions hot dogs in the air. Interminable!

So you will have to take my word for it when I say that the last five years have been the longest and shortest of my life. I have experienced highs no drug could mimic, and I've weathered lows beyond my imagination. Losing my job of over fifteen years was a part of it, and in any other timeline would have been the headline, but it was a minor blip in comparison to the real challenge. I am grateful that the timing worked out the way that it did -- being "made redundant" (chip chip cheerio, that's how the Brits do) earlier might've been too much for me to handle...and staying there longer would have been, well, interminable.

Five years and a little over two weeks ago, I was working from home (as I often did), laboring over an email meant to deal with author mismanagement that had led, inevitably, to author meltdown. I was stuck, unable to find the right words for the circumstances, and something terrible was creeping up from inside. I had experienced many panic attacks in my life at this point, so was keenly familiar with the symptoms. At first I believed that this godforsaken email was sending me down the same path. Heart palpitations, labored breathing, feelings of impending doom, all check. But the tunneling was severe, my hands were icy, and something at my core just felt...wrong. I felt poisoned. I felt short-circuited. The systems were going haywire.

I called a car service and signed off from work. From the chair, to the door, grabbed my purse, grabbed the keys, locked the door, on down the hall, into the elevator and down down down, I floated. Just floated. I was here and not here. It wasn't exactly the same as feeling faint, but in the realm. I'd never experienced anything like it. The drive was swimmy and hypersaturated. Everything--the trees, the cars, the people--seemed threatening and close. The urgent care center was mercifully empty. I sat and waited and thought about what I was going to say. I had a feeling I knew what was wrong, but wasn't sure if I could say the words out loud.

Ten months before, I'd suggested there might be a problem to my fleeing doctor. He'd already addressed the one thing I'd come in for, so he was irritated that I was bothering him to ask another, unrelated question. He said, I don't know, I don't know, I think there's information on the back of your insurance card. Then he was gone and I was sobbing alone in the little antiseptic room.

But before that, and certainly after, well steeped deep in a drunken hole, standing half in my kitchen, smoking, I'd certainly whispered the truth to myself. I would lean into the doorframe, lips close to the paint, and whisper it, a tiny secret: I'm an alcoholic. It would hang in the air for one hot moment, almost real, then I'd shake it off, stub the cigarette, and find my way back to the living room to continue drinking. Easy to ignore the nagging voices when you drown them in wine. Which I did, every night, for years.

The first time I tried to ask for help--the busy doctor--I stammered the question about whether or not rehab was covered by insurance, tears in my eyes, and broke down as he left with his unhelpful advice. The second time I told anyone the truth about my drinking was that day at the urgent care center, the poor medical assistant, who had to wait out my braying sobs to get to the core of what I was saying. My blood pressure was way too high--188/98--and policy required that they call up an ambulance to take me to hospital. By the time I talked to the EMTs, the fourth and fifth people to hear the truth about my drinking on that day, I was no longer sobbing, just crying. One of the EMTs asked me how much I drank. When I told him, he made a face and said, "That's not so bad. My mom drinks about the same." Which led to an uncomfortable end to our vaguely friendly acquaintance. When I waved goodbye to them at the hospital, I still felt scared...and he looked troubled. How much is too much? Who decides?

That early evening I got an EKG and a chest x-ray. I talked to one doctor, several nurses and technicians, and it was determined that I wasn't having a heart attack. I asked if they had any idea what might be causing the symptoms. They said that in this case they could only tell me what wasn't wrong with me. Apparently nothing in the blood tests alarmed them much, either, though later tests would confirm both kidney and liver damage. I was set free. I clung to that non-diagnosis like a life raft. If the doctors that checked me out didn't see anything wrong, then I must be fine. If the EMT's mom drank just as much as me and he didn't think it was a problem, I couldn't possibly have a problem. I went back home and went back to my old ways. I promised myself I would skip nights, drink less, try to wean myself back--not off, oh no--but back to the "socially acceptable" level of drinking. For funsies, NYC party party, after work drinks with the girls kind of thing. I wasn't broken, just a little out of whack, maybe.

For years, the NYC social life I'd know had fallen away. I rarely met friends for drinks anymore, rarely went to happy hours. When I did, I would drink club soda with lime, bide my time, then flee within an hour, annoyed that I had to surrender my real drinking time to keep up appearances. I'd tried imbibing at happy hour in the beginning of my descent, downing a couple of beers over a couple of hours, then making the hour long subway ride home to pick up drinking in earnest for the rest of the night, but found that the buzz would die and I would just end up tired and angry. A wasted high. So, seldom attendance and soda and lime, please. My objectives were hardwired and clear. I would leave work before six, make my way home, and drink until I had to go bed, usually midnight, sometimes one. On the days I worked from home, I would only commence drinking after I'd signed off from work for the night, relying on my ability to refrain from drinking during work hours as a clear sign that I was not an alcoholic. I would drink all night, sometimes beer, sometimes liquor, but more than anything red wine, usually cabernet sauvignon. I was a steady customer to a local, family owned liquor store who delivered without judgment, even when I answered the door looking like the actual crypt keeper.

The last year I imbibed in alcohol, they sent over a $100 case of wine as a thank you for my business. I was overwhelmed by their kindness and profusely thanked the person who delivered it. Then I stood there alone in my foyer just looking at it, realizing I could tell no one of my good fortune. No one could ever know. There would be far too much explaining to do.

On a Sunday night about two weeks after my ambulance ride and brief stay at the emergency room, I was attempting to have a "dry" night when the same symptoms started rolling in. I knew immediately that it was the same thing as before, the Phantom Ailment. I called the car service and told them to take me directly to Lutheran hospital. Within five minutes of checking in, they had me hooked up to the EKG yet again, the quiet bustle of 9pm Sunday at the ER filtering around me. I stared up at the ceiling, tears flowing, alone in a row of beds. It never occurred to me to call anyone.

Again, I cried every time I talked to a doctor, walked through my symptoms, spoke the truth about the amount of alcohol that went into my system every night. This time around, Lutheran decided to give me the full ramalamadingdong: echocardiogram, stress test, the whole nine. All told I was there for just over 24 very long hours, mostly waiting to be rolled to the next test. I spoke to several doctors over the course of the night and day, each one coached in kindness that was evident but appreciated all the same. Each time I talked about it, my tears were less severe, I was more forthcoming, and the picture was getting all the more clear.

The last doctor was a psychiatrist, a beautiful African-American woman with perfectly coiffed hair and flawless makeup. She was gentle and kind. We talked for a while. Finally she put her hand on my arm and said the words I was waiting to hear, "I think it's time. I think you know it's time. Are you ready to do this?" My eyes filled with tears and I nodded, lips in an ugly twist as I fought sobbing yet again. I finally managed to sputter out a yes. She gave me a slip of paper with name and number on it and told me she'd called ahead and that they would expect to hear from me the next day.

After I was discharged, a ghoulish, resentful part of me took the reins. I got home and poured a big glass of wine. I drank as much as I could that night. By definition, I got drunk, but it was a shitty drunk, an exhausted, thick, stupid drunk where it felt like there was a fist grinding into the back of my neck and my skin felt tight and brittle. The next day, September 9, I showed up to my rehab intake hungover, chaste, and terrified. As I answered her questions, all I could think was how foolish this was, how it would never work, how I would fail, and what a loser I was for being there in the first place. The self hatred was flowing freely and flooded out every rational thought in my brain. I knew only one thing for certain: There was no way I could do this.

September 10, 2014 was my first true day of sobriety. I haven't had a drink--or a smoke--since. Some days I can't imagine how I got here, but more often I can recall all too well what it was like to get through it, how fucking hard I fought, and I've got to take a breath and just bask in it. There's no victory dance, no one's going to run a flag up a pole, we're never going to close down the set, pack it up, and call it a day. I will have to remain vigilant for the rest of my life, but by degrees far less challenging than before, back in September of 2014, October, November, and on. I mean, it took months just to acclimate to the night. I would sit in quiet terror, unable to focus, unable to function, my appetite shot, sometimes just shaking. I told my rehab counselor that it didn't seem like withdrawal so what the hell could it be? Because it's nighttime, sweetie, she said. You drank all night every night, you don't know how to be. You lost your best friend and you associate that comfort with nighttime. I spent those first nights thrumming and humming, waiting for the world to end, the comfort of alcohol and cigarettes never far from my mind. These days, I can go for weeks without thinking of either at all. They just don't have the same terrible influence and charm.

I was the only "voluntary" at out-patient rehab. Everyone else was court ordered and functioning at different levels of resignation or Big Mad. Many did not think they needed to be there, some were definitely correct. While it was a dysfunctional arrangement (they told me at the end of my stay that my involvement taught them that they needed to separate the involuntaries from the voluntaries) I learned a great deal and gained vital skills to combat the lingering challenges of alcohol addiction. While the rest of the participants were annoyed (or dismissive and unimpressed), I delighted in learning that criminal thinking and addict thinking were very similar. Some of my biggest takeaways:

Your Addicted Brain Is Not Your Friend. It is forever trying to get the candy. It wants the candy. It needs the candy. It will lie, cheat, steal, and hurt anyone who gets in the way of that, including you. Now, this makes sense on a physiological level, considering what alcohol dependence does to your brain and, frankly your whole system. Remember the Phantom Ailment? Once I started getting myself back, I also came to the conclusion that I was a whole person, worthy of being treated as such, and dumped that shit doctor, Mr. Running for the Door, triple booking his patients, wait for 2 hours to see me Mr. Bullshit doctor. My new doctor, also Lutheran affiliated, went over my charts and confirmed what I suspected but was never confirmed until that moment: Alcoholic withdrawal. Because my body had decided that drinking for only six hours a day was no longer acceptable. It wanted more. So it really was a breaking point for me: Either get sober or start dying in earnest.

The physiological side of alcohol dependence is serious (in withdrawal, you can actually die--seizures, etc., it's messed up) but the psychological part is insidious and scary as hell. One of the things they drilled into our heads is to stop focusing on the failure. It's a common fear. What if I relapse? Then I've failed and I'm an even worse piece of shit than before. Woe is me. Might as well drink until I can't feel and maybe stop breathing. This! Right! Here! Is your BRAIN trying to GET THE CANDY. It works the same for smoking, too. I've smoked a cigarette, I've failed, fallen all the way off the wagon, oh look the wagon is already too far from here where I sit in this pity puddle, might as well have another. And so on. You can apply it to any vice, really. Didn't go to the gym, missed a day, already I'm a loser, might as well stay in bed today, too. And tomorrow.

They taught us to take the power away from the act of relapsing by saying it loud: I will relapse. I WILL RELAPSE. So what. It doesn't make me less of a person if I do. And it's not an excuse to wallow in it, which is what BRAIN is trying to get the addict to do. This probably sounds scary to loved ones standing on the outside looking in, but it shouldn't. This is the addict controlling the problem instead of the problem controlling addict. We're taking away its magic. It's still there--always will be--but it's not capering in the darkness, beckoning us to give it up, you know you can't last, you're a weak nothing who would feel so much better if you just had a drink.

Addiction Is More Than Substance Abuse. It changes you. You become a darker version of you, a sicker, sadder, paler version. That's my story. For others, they break laws, hurt people, they brawl, they destroy. Most of my destruction was inward. One of the major signs that a person may be abusing is LYING. To yourself and to others. No one in my life had any idea what was going on and that was by very careful design. I lived far out in Bay Ridge and never invited anyone over. I certainly never admitted to the level of my drinking and laughed along with everyone else at the hee haw drinkity drunkity jokes in movies and television. I dated no one during my abuse for fear that they would discover or impede my secret (nothing was more important), and for the darker fear that I would find someone like me and we would drink ourselves into the mire. Except for work and yearly jaunts home (where I white knuckled it for a week then fled back to NYC and my wine), I was isolated. My face started changing, too. It seemed to spread, dull. My skin was thin and flawed. The pigment on my lower legs got spotty and dark from liver malfunction. I gained an enormous amount of weight.

People knew something was wrong. They just didn't know what was wrong. I lied when I needed to lie. I deflected when I needed to deflect. My life grew gray and opaque. My ability to feel anything was stunted and still. I won't go into detail, but when I think back to the worst of it, my heart breaks for that person. It was me and it wasn't me. The suffering was immense, immeasurable, deep. While it was apparently frowned upon to get too personal, one of the counselors told us a story about his own journey on one of my first days in the program. He'd been using a cornucopia of narcotics, running the streets, thieving and using and getting up to no good. He had potential, had teachers who told him he'd had potential, but had squandered every opportunity to run with his boys and get high. It had gotten bad, he wasn't running the drugs so much as the drugs were running him, and he'd finally gotten caught red handed. He told us that once the handcuffs clicked, all he felt was a rush of relief. Thank God, this is over. I can rest. 

Like, what?! Right? But I sat there gobsmacked because I felt that so hard I could barely breathe. It changes you. You get pushed so far adrift from what you were, and it's so insidious how it happens, how more and more equal less and less and suddenly you're not having fun so much as medicating to keep from flying to pieces. I would watch shows like Lock Up and think maybe it wouldn't be so bad...I could eat that meat/bread/vegetable cake they serve in solitary. Sure! Yes! Because there would be a lock on the door and I would have no other choice than to sit there, sleep there, keep me away from my vice there, and rest. Just. Fucking. Rest. Because abusing breaks you down at every level: physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. I believed I would've happily eaten the Solitary Cake if someone would just save me from myself.

It's Not a Competition. This is a sad one. Because some of my fellow participants couldn't get past that, either to win the prize (Biggest Boozer?) or prove that they shouldn't have to be there in the first place. Everyone's "bottom" is different. And some people have to hit different depths multiple times until they either get help or die. The human animal is far too complex to ascribe one set of rules to apply to every single individual. It's not a "you must be this tall to ride this ride" kind of ride. This loops back to the Addicted Brain Who Hates You lesson -- because an addict's brain can and will convince the addict that she is totally fine if her behavior mirrors someone else's, even if it's just measured in liters and everyone can ignore that Bob seems fine, has a clean house, good job, etc. etc., while the addict is licking dust off the floor under the bed and contemplating ending it all. But we drink basically the same! Kind of! Believe me, when that EMT seemed to pshaw my alcohol intake, I suckered onto that like a beached fish to a splash of water. Gimme gimme gimme -- I will take anything. Just tell me I'm not broken.

But I was. And I don't need anyone else's validation to know that. I was there. Despite my flaws, and the millions upon millions of brain cells I cabernet sauvignoned into oblivion, I'm pretty smart. I had a serious problem and needed help.

Last but Best: Clarity Is REAL. You've heard people say it. They go to ashrams or church or 7-11 and stare at the fluorescents and Get Clarity. You've certainly heard people in recovery say it. Just like you've heard "one day at a time." Ugh, right? But Lord Almighty is it different when it happens to you. One day at a time sounds tedious, stupid, and simpleminded, but it's a fact, Jack. Primarily because I became so very cognizant of the passage of time. Those first months were slow, slow slogs of merciless sobriety, steely splinters of sun, counting every breath, awake all night, shaky all day sobriety, man. It sucked so hard. But I would get through it, tick it off the calendar, one more day. Those days, one day at a time, were earned.

As time progressed, that cloudy gray life started to gain color. I once told my therapist it was like I'd been living my life looking through a dirty window, everything skewed and apart from me, muffled and remote. Imagine what it was like when the color started seeping back, the window warped and thinned, then blew away like some wisp of cellophane. I never want anyone to know that darkness, but clarity? Full-color Clarity? I wish it on everyone. And yes, it can hurt, like when I realized that while I tried my best to keep my alcohol abuse away from my family, it still snarled out of me in not so subtle ways. The last few times I went home to visit during my abuse phase were prefaced with increasingly hostile emails to "just let me relax" and "don't grill me about how I look or what's going on with me," and a blanket excuse that work was so stressful and I didn't want to be hassled, etc. because it would only make it worse. These emails were semi-hysterical and clearly desperate. And basically screaming that something was very wrong with me and I was being manipulative as hell to frighten away any nosy nancy business. I actually remember the moment I got clarity on that one. It was in rehab and our counselor was talking about manipulative behaviors that addicts and criminals similarly employ to get what they want. I sunk into my chair, deeply embarrassed, never realizing until just that moment how terribly I'd behaved. At the time I wrote those emails, even during the "sober" hours, they seemed maybe a little curt, but that was all. What a difference clarity makes.

And of course clarity hurts when you get to the core of the Why. It's different for everyone. There's no need for me to get into it, but I will say that while it was painful (and humiliating, and infuriating), it was ultimately liberating. More importantly, these revelations laid the foundation for the self worth I have now. I'll never say I'm "grateful" for the reasons (fuck them and the bowlegged horses they rode in on) but I'm grateful I came out of it alive...and changed for the better.

Clarity. I was deep under, depressed, opaque, and fading. I was miserable. Then sobriety, the fledgling, dappled light of clarity. And one day I broke a candlestick and felt something I'd never felt before: Unbridled Joy. Even now, almost five years later, the memory of that day gives me goosebumps. I'd only just found my iPod Shuffle (it is tiny and I lost track of it constantly) and had hooked it up to some speakers to see if they were working and worth keeping. They were garbage speakers, tinny computer speakers with barely a hint of base, but I hadn't listened to them in years and figured I should test them before chucking them. While navigating the twisted cables and pushing the click wheel on the Shuffle, I somehow managed to knock an old, glass candlestick to the floor. Months before I would have flown into a fit of rage, but I just went and grabbed the Swiffer and started to sweep. Then Mary J. Blige's "Family Affair" started playing and something happened. I felt music. I felt Music. With all my feelings. Not stunted, dulled, depressed non-feelings, but real, live, genuine, CLEAR feelings. I danced, I Swiffered, I sobbed, and I cackled like a freakin LOON, round and round. The neighbors probably thought I'd finally blown my circuits but I couldn't stop. It was Glorious. I was overwhelmed. And for the first time in that shaky start of it all, I felt full up. Joy joy JOY. Rediscovering music was transformative.

I had a lot of little moments and big moments in those first six months or so, and from time to time something will still get to me and I'll have to stop and smell all that Clarity. It's transcendent, you can't force it, and it rolls in when it wants, but hot damn does it ever make it worth it. The last big moment was sitting by the lake looking out over the Tetons just shaken to the core that I was there, really there, and I had gotten there all on my own, clear headed, sober, and a functioning adult once more. And of course I cried. There was a time I believed with all of my heart that there was no getting out of that hole. I would just drink until something changed, lost my job, out on the streets, God knows what...or they'd find my body and it would just be...over. Big deal.

That was five years ago. FIVE! At once so long ago and yet just yesterday, depending on the day, the memory, and the varied and unpredictable levels of clarity. I am deeply proud of these five years and I am grateful for the support I've received from my family and friends in the aftermath of all my revelations. Those first confessions were difficult, even terrifying, but I received nothing but love and kindness, which was exactly what I needed. In those first days, those first confessions to medical professionals trying to help me, I never would have believed how far I have come, how much happier I am, and how easy it is to talk about my past alcohol abuse. One fucking day at a time, man.

I am also deeply grateful for the NYU Lutheran Medical Center (now renamed NYU Langone Hospital) for their kind, patient, and thorough care (and after care). The Resource Counseling Center was vital for those first months of sobriety. They taught me how to manage my trickster brain and supported me through every whiplashing stage of early recovery. My therapist, who will remain anonymous here, took up the reins after rehab was completed, and set to work on many of the deeper issues that required excavation, study, analysis, and care. I'd drop her name here if I could, but it wouldn't be prudent. All I can say is that I hope every person seeking therapy gets someone as amazing as her. I don't regret leaving New York, but it was damn hard to leave her expertise, guidance, and excellent treatment behind.

This should never be necessary--Universal Healthcare NOW NOW NOW--but I am incredibly grateful to my company at that time, whose coverage of drug and rehabilitation treatment totaled 100 percent. Read it again. One Hundred Percent. I remember standing at reception at the Resource Counseling Center, having just turned in my first pee cup (yee haw), sick to my stomach with worry over the bill. How would I pay for this? How bad was this going to be? I was drowning in debt and barely able to pay my bills every month. I was crossing my fingers that the money I saved on wine and cigarettes would cover the expense. When the receptionist told me that it was covered, I genuinely did not understand her. I asked her to please clarify. She looked at me patiently and stated that my insurance covered the cost in its entirety. I would not need to make any payments, ever. I said okay, thanked her, and headed for the elevator, eyes filling with tears. God knows there were so many tears and a lot of anguish and fear, but those happy tears? When you just weep for joy? Incredible. Because here's the thing that's been getting better but still has a very long way to go: Stigma. The amount of shame so many of us feel is impossible to explain. There are plenty of understandable reasons why addicts are judged and shamed. I get it. I was a child growing up around alcoholics. Addicts hurt people, often in ways that leave permanent scars, inside and out. Many, many scars. At the very best, it is a big joke, the capering grotesque, smeared lipstick, Meredith Palmer, Arthur, Ozzy Osbourne snorting ants kind of joke. But at the very worst? We are stupid, destructive, Evil. Lock em up, throw away the key. And the sodden drunk, bruised and reeling, will agree that everyone would be better off without him. It is, after all, a goddamned depressant. Some will never recover. They will abuse and hurt and steal and wallow until they finally succumb. Everyone knows someone, many of us know generations of someones, one right after the other, sucked down into the abyss. But there are people like me, too. Not entirely a demon, worthy of some absolution, and one chance (if not many) to crawl out of the depths and back into the light. With help, of course.

I cannot express to you how I felt sitting across from Connie in HR (last name redacted, but some of you will know) and telling her what it meant to me to learn that our company covered drug and alcohol rehabilitation entirely. It was a moment in time, so I can't speak for later, when we branched off to another mothership and then changed altogether from a merger, but at the exact moment I needed that support, it was there. No words can honor it.

Before I sign off, one last thing: If you think you are in trouble, seek help. There are resources, and it doesn't cost anything to do some research. Start online--there are plenty of websites, articles, and even quizzes to assess if you are in need of help. Don't be scared. I know that even this step can seem too difficult to bear. There are various symptoms of alcoholism and alcohol abuse (not exactly the same, but both can and will receive treatment)--you don't have to have all of them to qualify. For example, in my case, I

• craved alcohol, 
• drank alone and in secret, 
• lied about my drinking, 
• felt ashamed of my drinking,
• put my drinking above everything else, 
• had to drink more to achieve an "acceptable" high, and
• drank to deal with stress and drown out issues I didn't want to face. 

Some believe that you have to drink every waking hour to truly have a "problem" but that is just not the case. Remember, not a competition.

Leave your shame behind and face your challenges head on. Be honest with yourself. Don't live in fear of failure or relapsing. You are worth saving.

The Gift of Libraries: Requesting Items, Part Deux

The Wichita Public Library stocked Idiocracy. My cup runneth over with BRAWNDO: The Thirst Mutilator!

Look, Idiocracy is mean. Even now, it still comes off as mean, but I've been called tenderhearted in the past and I'll begrudgingly admit that it may or may not be sort of true. The movie depicts a future when idiots outbreed nonidiots and society slides into supreme stupidity living in a ruin of unending garbage, broken automation, droughts, electrolytes, and rampant, unblinking dipshittery. Everything comes from Costco (including law degrees), Starbucks serves sex acts, and an average 21st century man can outwit just about everyone on the planet.

Idiocracy's take on the surviving government is where the movie really shines. And it's where some relief can be found for our current woes...though I suppose it could have the opposite effect, depending on your political inclinations. It certainly did me good to watch it again. It seems less mean and just a squidge more prophetic these days, with the normalization of buffoonery on the daily menu and no end (or bottom to the pit of shame in DC) in sight.

Thank you. WPL! And for future viewers who have never seen Idiocracy (there are so many), fair warning: you're probably going to get offended at some point. It's lewd, crude, delights in the worst stereotypes, and drops the f-word gay slur more than once. And this is coming from the mouths of lawyers, doctors and, of course, your elected officials to the highest offices in the land.

The Gift of Libraries: Requesting Items

It's been too long, hasn't it? I'll blame the book--when in doubt always blame the book--but it isn't all about the book. Right now I'm only managing editing what I've written thus far, and part of that is to get the taste of the story back in my mouth again, less to do with producing anything new (other than the inevitable rewrites that walk hand-in-hand with editing, regardless).

I would love to blame the holidays (since we all blame the holidays for every egregious act of procrastination), but since the latest was flag day, probably not, though I did coast like a ghost all up and around that period of time between November 2018 and January 2019. Since then? We've been working on our fitness in the household, primarily cardio, with some dabbling in planks which have been quite hilarious and also seriously achy and also breaky. Excuses! Though I would like to be nice and fit for my eventual visit to Lawrence, Kansas, and the beautiful, expansive, and very hilly University of Kansas campus. I'd like to spend time in the libraries, for sure, but would also prefer to do it right, walking as much as I am able and really taking in the sights. For those who think of Kansas as an entirely flat plate of nothing except for maybe fields of wheat, the KU campus can be quite a shock. There are some legit, brutal hills to traverse.

So why stop now and finally revisit the library/travel blog? To celebrate the glory of the library, specifically the Wichita Public Library system. Having been back in town for 2+ solid years, I can say with authority that they work hard to provide quality service to the community. The website is fantastic, the branches are vital to the outlying neighborhoods, and the central, advanced learning library is a true gem, still gleaming new and shiny, with abundant, electrified seating options, airy stacks, phenomenal views, and helpful, friendly staff.

I've been a bit "checked out" (eh heh) with other life events, so recently came back with a vengeance, checking out books, scanning through the DVD selection, and revisiting some old searches I'd started back in 2017. After my initial return to Wichita and setting up a new account in the library system, I created a list of books I wanted to read, which can be done via the website and exists, I'm guessing, as long as your account exists. I accrued the list from old Entertainment Weekly book reviews circa 2007-2016 and "Best of" lists via the internet. Why EW book reviews of all things? Because that was basically all I could rally myself into reading during the worst of my alcohol abuse and subsequent recovery. For all intents and purposes, after leaving behind the heavy burdens of NYC and all that had happened, I was only really ready to read books, cover to cover, when I returned home in January of 2017. Sounds weird, right? Like, how many novelists are known as both voracious readers and voracious drinkers? So many. But that wasn't my alcoholism story. And as we all learned in rehab, everyone's story is different. So, with my appetite and focus for reading finally restored, I searched through the lists of reviews looking for vaguely remembered synopses, stories that sounded intriguing, books I truly wanted to read at the time, then forgot as soon as the next tumbler of wine was drained. I doubt I found them all, but I was able to create a considerable list.

There was only one title the Wichita Public Library system did not have in stock at any of the branches: Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. This was garnered from the online "best of" searches, but I didn't need much prodding to seek it out. McCarthy's The Road was one of the few titles I did manage to read during those dark times--near the beginning of the dark times when I was still mostly human--and while it did nothing for my depression (dear God, the darkness of it??) it did everything in terms of inspiration, awe, and creative energy. If you've never read McCarthy...just, no. Stop what you are doing. Immediately. Go to the Barnes and Noble. Go the the library. Find the fiction, under McCarthy, Cormac. They'll have at least one copy of something. Get it, buy it, check it out, read it tonight. He does things with language, incredible, impossible things. He turned me inside out, for real. Round and round. His is a national treasure and one of The Greats.

The WPL website had a record for Blood Meridian, but no copies available, not checked out or on hold, just non-existent. I figured it would be restocked at some point considering the author and the easy-to-find, "best of" status of the book in general. I checked back to the record (and my list: updating, adding, subtracting as I knocked those long desired tomes out, one by one) from time to time, but Blood Meridian remained zero of zero available in the system. I kind of forgot about it. Until this recent resurgence of reading rainbow vigor, that is. I checked it again and nope, still no Blood Meridian. Finally, after two years, I was done waiting. I figured if I wanted to read it, I'd probably end up having to buy it. There was one option to exhaust before breaking down and making a purchase: Cant find it? Suggest an Item! via the WPL website...

I clicked through to the order form, filled it out with all the requisite information, and found myself at that last question (How did you learn about it? Any notes to add?). I debated skipping the question and leaving it blank, but figured laying it on thick might help more, so I did. Librarians, I am sorry. Truly. I know you know your shit. But I was swinging for the fences. So I might've said it was wrong for any major library system not to carry at least one copy of every Cormac McCarthy novel available because he is one of the greatest American writers, living or dead, and also how dare you. Honestly, it wasn't quite that snotty, but maybe verging on it a little. I wanted that book. And also, seriously, stock your Cormac McCarthy, ya libraries.

I did not think much would come of it...and if anything did, it would be months before I held a dilapidated, second hand copy in my hand. And I would have been glad for it, too, because I really want to read it. Instead, less than a week later, I get notification via text and email that Blood Meridian is on hold, waiting for me to pick it up at my neighborhood branch, Rockwell. You will have to imagine the various cockatiel-dolphin noises that frightened my cat friends and woke the cemetery. YAY MY BOOK, but also whaaaat? 

Like most, I always assumed libraries got stingy stipends in the form of rolled nickels, perhaps via an old sock, handed out yearly, maybe bi-yearly, surely not quarterly, and only to be used on the most urgently required (e.g. new release, big name, bestseller) materials. Certainly there were no nickles to spare on my 1985 wishlist paperback? My initial thought was that maybe the library system stores books with little or no traffic for safekeeping offsite somewhere and that they'd just pulled it from there. I'm not even sure if that is a thing, but I thought it was possible, so much as libraries are like museums where not everything could possibly be displayed at all times. Assuming the story was something along those lines, I hoppy skippied over to Rockwell in the Rogue, overjoyed and ready to pull the old, dusty copy from the hold shelf to finally--gleefully--check it out.

But it wasn't old and dusty. It was pristine. Protected by a brand new, completely unscuffed plastic cover. As I wondered over it, cooing and acting a general fool, I made the guy at circulation check to see if he could determine when it was acquired. Sure enough, this copy of Blood Meridian had been put into the system just a couple of days prior. I was GOBSMACKED. The good kind.

So let's review: I filled out the request form for a 1985 paperback and about a week later the as-new, never-read condition book was somehow in my hands. Purchased, acquired, cataloged, plasticated, and ready and waiting for me at my branch. Not the central, learning library, either. It was ready for me at my branch. I mean, COME ON, y'all. That is FREAKING AMAZING. I even checked the record afterward and sure enough, Blood Meridian is no longer zero of zero available, it's now zero of ONE. Because I've got it! Thanks to the efforts of the Wichita Public Library system and the taxes we pay for the privilege of having such a fine service for our community. YAY!

Post-script: I also requested they add at least one copy of Idiocracy to the collection as a healing balm for these trying times, but no dice as of yet. I'll try again soon, and add more electrolytes.

Advanced Learning Library, August 2018 UPDATES!

I've now spent a fair amount of time in the new Advanced Learning Library in downtown(ish) Wichita, Kansas, and have acquired a number of updates to share.

I'm in the midst of re-reading my blog, doing light editing, taking some notes...and have found that above all else the thing I regret the most is the brevity of it all. Most of the libraries reviewed in Travelrogue were one shot deals; some were visited a mere couple of hours before I had to jet off to another destination. I would have loved to have spent real time in a lot of these libraries (though Pasadena and Seattle spring immediately to mind), primarily to get to know them much better, but also to relay more broad and solid observations in my blog entries. While some libraries suffer chronic ailments (Utah's Magna and Glendale, for example), other libraries that left terrible impressions (oy, San Bernardino) might've just been suffering a seriously "off" day. In most of these cases, I will never know. I have to acknowledge that it is unfair, at the very least. And that goes both ways. For all I know, Pasadena may have the meanest staff this side of Hell and a strict late fee policy or some other bad habits I would have no way of knowing since I never checked anything out there...or anywhere else I've visited, save the Wichita locations.

So, it's nice to get to update my observations a bit, as I've already done for a few of the Wichita-area locations (see Andover, specifically--what a change of heart!). After all, the only way to truly know a place is to spend some real time living in it, right? Plenty of Flatiron workers will eagerly tell you that while the building is super pretty and obviously striking on the outside, the inside is 98% garbage. The bathrooms are teeny tiny--some hilariously so, like you have to step over the toilet and, once closed, the damn door hits your knees--and are on every other floor (boys on the evens, girls on the odds). The finishing is pure rebate, on sale, cheap-o creep-o, mismatching crap, from the white, scarred walls to the industrial, metal door frames. Don't even get me started on the nasty carpet, made of squares so that stained patches might be replaced by new squares...had they actually bothered to stock them (they didn't). Before they installed replacement windows (ugly), the old windows let all the smut of the city blow in and coat everything in a film of black dust. And the "water bugs"--so, so many water bugs, a.k.a. Big Juicy-Yet-Crunchy Cockroaches everywhere. Scurrying on the stairwells, chasing people down the hallways. Falling from the drop ceilings.

I could go on, I really could. It was, in a word, gross. But do I still tell people I worked there? HELLS yes. Because nobody cares about gritty city truth. They just love hearing how you worked in a historic building. And I did, and it was at least interesting, if not entirely...sanitary? Professional? But then what in NYC really is? I remember similar "water bugs" falling from the drop tiles at my doctor's office once, so...yeah. And the same goes with visiting NYC in general, even for a week. You don't really know the city until you live there. Sure, you're surrounded by history with a wealth of arts and culture at your fingertips, but you do have to dodge and ungodly amount of poop on the sidewalks and, if you are really lucky, you may even get to dodge random pieces of paper floating through the air, whipped by the skyscraper wind tunnels and boosted by the subway trains screaming past underneath your feet. Papers smeared with brown something, papers darting directly toward your head.

A visit filled with cab rides tells you nothing about NYC reality, when you're earning your literal dimes and can't afford more than the subway (already an outrage to your bank account) and find yourself walking, walking, walking everywhere always because it is just less of a hassle and the trains don't really go east-west in Manhattan anyway (save one, a hellish ride). Or the fact that you have to carry everything, so grocery shopping is a revolving door because you can't carry what you need in one go, so you shop more than you want, and are sometimes stuck with some pretty vile options (e.g. one local store where a fly was packaged into the steak, nicely fat and juicy all squished up in there and proudly displayed, the whole place smelling of dead blood and Pine Sol). Or just the horrors you see. And you do see them, not every day, but sometimes things can get very real, and very ugly, very fast. Sometimes it's funny (the Fried Chicken Fight being my all time favorite) and sometimes you're getting assaulted in broad daylight on a busy street and no one is even looking at the spectacle, let alone helping you. That last one didn't happen to me, thank God, but it happened to a friend.

Now, if it sounds like I'm harping on NYC, well, yes. I am. Because visiting is one thing--staying in hotels, spending money on restaurants, plays, bars, shows, taking cabs hither and thither, and every day is just fun fun fun. The day-in, day-out drudgery is quite another thing...hour-long commutes stuck in a metal can that smells of mouths and armpits, working all day long and slogging home in a downpour with your broke ass black umbrella from the bodega, feet sodden, ankle scratched from some brush-by on the morning commute so you might have leprosy now, up to your fourth floor walk-up that costs $1200/month in Brooklyn (forget Manhattan hahahaha) and is about as big as the fanciest master closet you ever saw...on television...once.

(Let's be real in this side-side-side note: I'm harping because, quite frankly, I wasn't really into it from the start. I wanted to work in publishing and that is where the lion's share of publishing jobs reside. Ergo, if I wanted to work in publishing, I had to move to NYC. Which I did, and I worked in the industry for over 15 years. Don't get me wrong. At first I loved the new experiences--it was all very different from anything I'd done up to that point--but eventually things turned sour. The drinking was fun...until it wasn't. The job, until the very end, was always worth the price of admission, but to be perfectly honest I'd have been happier in the same job in almost any other US city. I got very tired of the "realness," too dependent on bad people, and started drinking myself into oblivion to avoid thinking about how miserable I'd become. It's not a place for everyone. And once the job was gone, and my head was finally on more or less straight, I left. And NYC, if it cared to say anything at all, would have likely brayed "And don't let the door hitcha on the way out!")

Cheese Grater = Electron Membrane 1

I don't think I'm going to experience anything of the sort during the time spent at the new Advanced Learning Library. Parking is easy (and free!), there are three different ways to handle returns (drive up window, outdoor slot, indoor slot), and checking out materials is such a breeze. I do proceed with caution whenever I need to use the restroom, making sure to check that I'm going in the right one depending on which floor I'm on, but I suppose eventually that habit will fall to the wayside. And the main artery traffic jams? I've run into them a couple of times, but more often than not I take the long way or avoid the first floor altogether. "My place" is on the second floor, now firmly set in stone in more ways than one.

I still use the study carrels, but have found that they are equally beloved by plenty of other people...most days, they are all taken by the time I arrive. That has never been a problem, since I pop over to the staff help desk right next to the carrels and ask to reserve a collaboration room. I've done it often enough that my regular guy remembers my name! And those rooms are very quiet...so long as the people in the other collaboration rooms are relatively quiet, too. One thing they maybe didn't think of was the transfer of sound from one collaboration room to the next. The sound barrier between the collaboration rooms and the library proper is solid, but it's less so between the rooms themselves. It's only been a problem a couple of times, and a mild one at that.

And when neither space is available? I set up shop in one of the many study desks available on either floor. Some of the desks are nested within the stacks, safely tucked away so that only people who are looking for those books in particular have any business being behind you. I'm in the business and job-seeking section as we speak, headphones on but nothing playing, and haven't been disturbed by anyone for hours. NICE.

I've also found solace at the very back of the Research Pavilion on the second floor. The views are limited, but there's hardly ever anyone back here and I don't have to put on headphones to block out immediate noises. And, for some reason, there is a New Friend on the study table I prefer to use...a Brother typewriter, looking all 1993 Fancypantsy. Bless its little clickity heart.

Even nicer? Things have calmed down a bit, I think. The drive for certain staff members to converse about whatnot yellingly out in the middle of the library has seemed to dissipate, thank the lordy lord. It's a generally quiet space, the electricity flows from every which way, the seating is comfortable and varied, and it is just a fantastic place to get some work done. Love, love, love it.

When I looked up the library to get the link for this entry, I noticed there were sixteen Google reviews already, all but one crowing compliments left and right, espousing all of the wonderful attributes of the new space and services, and showing the Big Big Love all around...except for one Giant Asshole who gave the place one star because "it wasn't open yet." I clicked the link and found a lot of similarly entitled, bitter reviews from this jerk, and all over the world to boot. I reported the review to Google, so I hope they take it down. It definitely qualifies as "off topic." Who gives a business under construction a bad review because they have the audacity not to be open yet, I ask you? A dingleberry. That's who. One star.

Over the month of July, signs started showing up in the foyer from the parking lot that explained the art around the building, so I've included some pictures here. Huzzah! Explanations are welcome. I'm glad to see the cheese grater better explained, but no amount of exposition is going to save the Knowledge Noodles. I am so sorry, but ugh. The execution is not successful, neither in the rendering of the bark/tree stand nor in the sizing/writing/reading of the scrolls. I miscounted the number of Knowledge Noodles in my first blog entry since I have spent zero time on the eastward facing "front" of the building. I think there are something like six of them out there. So, noodles noodles everywhere, all impossible to read without getting a headache.

The Avian Migration piece has been installed in the atrium. I am going to have to see it at different times of day and night for awhile before I have a real sense of how I feel about it. The execution does not match the rendering, nor do the pieces move much at all, though they are meant to react to sensors in different parts of the library. From what I can tell, they might as well be moving because of various breezes throughout the library. It is quite possible that the installation is not yet complete, though, so the verdict is not yet in. When I look at it, I can't help but think of the Filament Mind art installation in the foyer of the Teton County Library, made of thousands of strands of fiber-optics, all reacting to library search engine results. It's a visually arresting piece, not to mention objectively beautiful in a multitude of ways. I would guess that there is a vast gulf between the cost of Filament Mind and Avian Migration, and since Jackson is presumably a thriving tourist town flush with cash it stands to reason, but still I hoped for more. That being said, Filament Mind is robbed of some of its glory when daylight washes out the color effects, so perhaps Avian Migration will be better at night, too. I'll have to wait for the summer to pass before I get a real crack at seeing it in a full-dark setting (though a night drive-by this past Saturday showed the interior lit up like the surface of the chain-drugstore sun, so my hopes aren't exactly up). The actual materials used look like holographic. metallic airplanes, so they might react well to laser light, something any sketchy-mcsketchballs store on sixth avenue in the NYC "fashion district" can afford, so why not the Wichita central library?

Sunny day shot, viewed from the doorway.

The outdoor tables and chairs for the reading pavilion were finally delivered just recently--they were still in boxes last week, but they've got it pretty well set up now, umbrellas and all. It's still hot as Satan's taint in Wichita, as it has been all damn summer long, so I won't be wandering out there anytime soon. Much like the majority of the first floor, I'm avoiding the outdoor spaces for now. I did witness at least one dude smoking out there, so we'll see how that space turns out when the weather gets more bearable. Reading haven for all...or smoke deck for some? Do I sound bitchy? I sound bitchy. I smoked forever so I get to be bitchy. Like, it's hard, dude. So, smoke in your car, at home, or away elsewhere, just away from me. Because cigarette smoke still smells so delicious even though I'm 3 years, 11 months smoke free SO Y'ALL NEED TO GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME. Thbank, as we used to say in publishing.

Gray day shot, viewed from a collaboration room.

There have been some unavoidable hiccups transitioning from the old Central Library to the new ALL, but my firsthand experiences have been professional and impressive. I regularly check out a lot of DVDs (e.g. this past week's wonderful selections: I, Tonya, Space Camp, and Ferdinand, all fantastic) and some books (I checked out Ulysses because my self-hatred is a never ending river running under my soft and fluffy mantle, I am a Foole for the Ages and should stick my head in a dirty mop bucket and drown because Who, Exactly, Do I Think I AM, trying to read effing Ulysses?) and am a stickler for turning things in on time, so I was gobsmacked and ready to rumble when I saw that my account had a hold on it and a three dollar fine. EXCUSE ME, I thought, though underneath it (in the river of self hatred, whispering whispering) I did think I must've forgotten something, missed something, done something wrong. I looked into it further and determined the library was definitely in the wrong. I had the evidence of tomfoolery logged in my email (thanks to the Wichita library system's awesome notifications) and headed over to the ALL main circulation ready to make my case. The young woman behind the desk was remarkably friendly and chill, clicked through my record and said, yeah, we're behind with checking things in right now, so that's probably what happened. I'll clear your record. Like that. No argument, no pickle-faced suspicion, no static. Just NICE, under control, and professional.

I'm sure the staff has plenty of opening-blues stories, though I doubt any of them include water bugs or mismatched, half broken furniture from all the decades (ahem Flatiron ahem). I've witnessed some issues with the little iPad-type tablets they walk around with, signing in or securing collaboration rooms, for instance. And a few incidents and comments have led me to wonder about the leadership in general. People seem not to be informed about things that they should definitely know, and there have been moments where it was clear that staff did not know the proper rules and regulations for the space. There is a sense of detachment from responsibility and a disconnect from ownership. Not all the time from every person...just general and not really all that hidden. It reminds me of a time during my stay in publishing, we called it "The Regime"...and I really don't have to say much more than that, do I? I hope that's not the case here, but these less-than-complimentary symptoms are not a sign of bad staffing--the truth is that it is never the case--but of ineffective management. Whether it is due to fatigue, ineptitude, or malice, who can say. But ya knickers are showing, gorl. Get it together! Managing people is hard, especially a large staff. For this I have nothing but respect. But keeping people empowered with knowledge is paramount, especially when serving the public. I have to wonder if the draining days of drearytude in the old central library eroded that sense of purpose and drive to do the very best. The staff seems more than willing to shine, so give them the resources they need to do that! Hashtag HUGS, hashtag NOTHINBUTLUV, hashtag PEACESIGN.