SpicyIdeas

Bookstore

/ dereid99 / Leave a comment

A couple of nights ago, I was in this bookstore. Slate grey roof and ceiling with dark mahogany shelves stacked with scattered tomes, big and small. I have a reading list, but I can’t see the titles on the page. I scan the shelves trying to find matching titles. Paper shaking in my wet fingers. I walk over to a table stacked with books like a three-D puzzle. I look under the table and resting on top of a broken wooden crate is a copy of Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. The spine is broken. The book rests in two pieces.  I’m not sure the novel is on my list, but I’m glad I found it. I leave it hoping to come back.

I move around the bookstore checking my list with words I can’t see. Behind me I hear a famous voice, but I can’t see the face. The man is yelling at someone in the distance behind a closed door. He is upset the other person is closing the bookstore. It’s doing well, he says, so why close it. The female voice says, because it’s time. The raspy voice mutters incoherency as I hear his footsteps move away.  A door opens with the tinkle of a bell and then closes without a sound. No faces, only sounds.

I pull a book off the shelf. I can’t read the title, but on the cover is a dark woman, dressed in regal purple with gold trim. Her hair beehive style adorned with sparkling geometrical figures like a castle tower with golden windows. Her beautiful head crowned in gold and rubies.  I know her, but her name falters.  I look ahead. She is standing stair top between two dark wooden posts, carved with intricate male heads-  dark, shiny and bald. The Queen touches the figures and raises her eyes.

I am no longer in the bookstore. I follow dignity down the stairs. She glides. Her feet don’t touch wood. My bare feet feel the hard, slick wood as I move behind her. When she reaches the bottom, she turns and goes into a magnificent room, filled with ancient books.

The room is dark but  graceful – rich cherry wood, a piano covered in books.   Maps adorn the walls – yellow and crisp and ready to fall into pieces. I see a large golden globe in the centre of the library and a statue of a famous man.  The women turns and hands me a book. It’s very heavy, bound in leather and on the cover a map with river indentations and rising mountains. Both are cold to touch.

I take the book and walk out of the room. I go up the stairs and I walk until I’m back in the bookstore. I know exactly where the book goes. I put it on a shelf. The book glows golden. Anyone who enters will see the book and they will know.

Robert Alexander Montgomery

/ dereid99 / Leave a comment

I woke up this morning and I couldn’t get Robert Alexander Montgomery out of my head. I don’t know how he got there, but he did. Rob as we called him was a great friend I worked with at large hotel, many, many years ago. My first real job after high school. Rob took me under his wing. The dude always wore a three-piece to work and he was only eighteen. He taught me how to dress and act in a business environment.

We only spent a couple of years hanging out, driving around in his metallic green Olds 442 and man the beast flew like snot. On our days off we’d travel down to his parent’s cabin, at a lake an hour or two out of town. We’d hang or go water skiing. One time we hung out with a very famous folk group who were playing at the hotel. I introduced them to my parents who were fans. Got me in high esteem. My son hanging with a nearly defunct folk group.

Rob and I lost contact. However, one day I got a call from a mutual friend who told me he died in a freakish accident. He was racing from one end of a restaurant to the other with a tray held high; he slipped, fell through a glass window and hit the ground fifteen metres below. He didn’t stand a chance. I thought the phone call was a joke and never believed it until woke up with Robert Alexander Montgomery in my head forty-four years later. I did the research.

The first information I found was on Ancestry: Robert Alexander Montgomery born 23 Jul 1959,  passed away on 14 Apr 1979 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.  I had to dig more. I went to a newspaper database and found the very sad article in the Edmonton Journal.  Dead at nineteen. Racing without shoes. Wow, it’s true.

It was nineteen-seventy-nine. How would I know the truth? There wasn’t an internet or social media I could check back then. No way to confirm anything. You either believed someone or you didn’t. Information came from newspapers, TV or radio and if you didn’t catch the story on the day it happened, there’d be no way of finding out the truth unless you went to a library (in those days I had no idea what was in a library besides shhhhhh). I let it slide, thinking it can’t be true (maybe I just didn’t want to believe).

Then I was thinking.  A simple Google search  of my friend’s horrific death brought up nothing.  Has Robert Alexander Montgomery faded into nothing? Is his memory gone except in the eyes of his family?  If you can’t Google someone, does that mean they don’t exist. Do we discard pre-Google death unless it’s something so horrific it’s burned into a thousand minds?

Hopefully,  if I put this article out there Robert Alexander Montgomery moves into this century and Rob is not forgotten. Happy Birthday Pal.

Lest We Forget

/ dereid99 / Leave a comment

I woke up this morning, looked out the window to silence and cold. Where are the school buses and the people going to work? And then I slapped myself in the head. How could I?

 I pulled a cup of warm java to my lips and read about a dude getting gunned down in the street, “bullets riddled his back and he fell into the street.”  A little too harsh first thing in the morning, so let’s read something else.  I open my other book and was faced with a dude jumping off a cliff in alcohol induced frivolity. Divers found his body stuck in three feet of mud.  The idea of death brought me to  soldiers sitting in stinking,  wet and cold mud trenches. Then to other heroes blowing on their fingers to keep the cold off as they sat in a frozen fox hole surrounded by newly fallen snow. Warm fingers equal  warm triggers.  And the fear. Not knowing if today was your last day on earth.

The reading passages weren’t  a coincidence. Someone was knocking on my dull brain reminding me of the  many men  who died for our democracy, for our freedom. Deaths that allow me to sit in a comfortable chair, sip a warm beverage and read whatever I like.  I was walking with my niece  in the mall a few days ago. I bought a poppy from a vet and put money into his bucket. An action I should’ve done weeks ago.  As we walked away,  she asked, “Why did you give him money? It’s not like anyone cares.” Ok, so after the shock,  I picked my jaw up off the floor and said, “How’s your German? Because no victory in the war and you’re speaking German. And the colour of your eyes? Ah, the work camp for you.”

I’m also a bit worried because this year I kept forgetting. In the past, this memorable day was an occasion  – go to a service, walk around the row of crosses. (I just looked at my watch and missed the 11/11/11.  I’ll get the last 11 – 11 minutes. I stop.   A moment of silence, just in time.)  This year the occasion nearly slipped by. It took me a few minutes in this morning to remember it was Remembrance Day. It took me so long to get my poppy on, just a few days ago. In fact, yesterday, when I walked to my car I saw my poppy had fallen off. It lay in the snow almost buried. Again, not a coincidence.

Yes, I almost forgot it was Remembrance Day, leading me to another thought. My mother-in-law is ninety-three years old. She was a teenager during the Nazi occupation of Belgium. Using her age as a guide, how many World War Two vets are left?  With my blank out memory and my young niece’s who cares attitude, how long will it be before the Wars and the men who died for freedom are forgotten. It’ll be a very sad day when  “Lest we Forget” becomes a reality.