Stirred Into Another Book Downsizing Purge

This is probably a recounting of a week end episode of a future series of purges. I am approaching my 72nd year, and have watched old acquaintances and friends both younger and older than I shuffle off the proverbial mortal coil. It is the "Way of All Flesh". No surprise, no news there, although it happens faster than even our parents warned. I have noted just how much "stuff" (a nod to the also late George Carlin's riff on the subject of the things we gather through our lives that we can't take with us, but relatives and friends who think they are immortal pick over with crow like glee) they leave behind. I have personally emptied or helped to empty some five or six apartments or homes after the original custodian died or could no longer safely remain alone or afford full time help. I hate the idea that I might do that to another, and I do tend to be a collector of specious items that mean something only to me. I try to root through things from time to time, and have given an enormous lot of a variety of mostly useful things to a Veteran's Charity, that picks up and accepts things that don't sell for much, and other charities decline.

There is a second impetus to my purge effort of this past few days, well, its current iteration. A friend gave me a particularly lovely book embosser. It is an image of a cat (as I am a well known lover of cats, to my friends) patting at a string that hangs from a crescent moon. And it has my full name printed below. I have others and have occasionally used them, but this one is particularly pleasant.  

I have written here how much I love receiving a book that has a name of the previous owner in it, handwritten or a formal bookplate. I wrote a whole entry here some years ago about a book of letters of Saint John Henry Newman once owned by the late Mr. Shorthouse of England. I learned a lot about his life on line and the connection still resonates with me today. although we never met in life. I like the tapestry of connection. I admit honestly of my wish to make that connection with some reader after I have moved onto eternity, paradoxical as that might be in that I know that in the beatific vision (albeit likely after a stint in Purgatory) I won't be thinking about the affairs of the earth any longer, except perhaps to hope and pray for my family and friends to join me to be with God. 

I am also considering, and have been for some time, the making of final plans for my location should I make it well beyond my 72nd year---that is, while I still am alive, but perhaps not in a postion to care for myself, as oft I have now seen others. Some were fortunate enough to have the help of friends when family was not available. Others went into the vortex of sickness, death and anonymity, where there was no intercessor. I do not wish to be either of these. I realize that the best laid plans often go awry and I have made several, but whether I stay here in this apartment with help (that one hopes one can afford), or move to an independent/assisted living remains a question mark I would like to make a period in the not distant future. Even at that the reality of the final chapter is ambiguous. 

But, back to purging, I really hope to purge the clutter. My aunt in New York did a good job of that before her age (nearly 99) made it necessary. She actually might have thrown out or given away too much. But her apartment is spare (and small) so it should be easy for those who will be tasked with the aftermath of a good age.

And so I went back to my dining room library and pulled out books again. I still have lots of my father's books, which were old when I was young in the Bronx. Many of them are just falling apart, lots of literary notables, a few I've read, many I haven't. Every time I have thought of getting rid of them, I have told myself I will read them, and then haven't. I favor non-fiction and many of these are fiction.

As of this writing I have about 7 shopping bags. And more to load when I get more shopping bags. Perhaps they are in too rough shape. Perhaps though they are in good enough shape for a final handling by a curious reader. I embossed a couple as well to keep, wherever it is I go, or if I stay here. 

I met up with a young psychologist friend on Saturday. I have already sent a few books to her, and maybe she will want a few more down the road, though they are likely outdated as my days of studying psychology is 27 years in the past. 

Among the items I found in the dusty upper reaches of my library (yet to be cleaned) was a "book" of cat page holders. It looks pretty old, but now I have 20 or more bookmarks ready in my desk, where usually I can find none and use pens or pencils or business cards, and in the worst need, a post-it.

I found myself reading aloud a bunch of Emily Dickinson poems. I might do an Ordinary Old Catholic Me podcast episode reading some. She was not Catholic. In fact, it sounds as if she was a somewhat disaffected Calvinist, and yet she often wrote of God, which she viewed pantheistically. Well though not theologically sound in Catholicism, Catholics do that as well. Shades of my young life doing a poetry show on WFUV, Fordham University's radio station. An educational program was needed for a Sunday, and that's how I got onto the air beyond a station identification and liner notes on the Classical Evening Concert. So though I have never been a poetry fanatic (I like some very much and many not at all; the same way I feel about opera--I like many arias but have a hard time with the in between singing), I did that show for several years, and learned to like a few more poems than I had before), I know that it is a beautiful part of Western Civilization that must be preserved, and some poems are truly sublime, whether I like them or not. 

So, since I last sat down to write here, I have made the current cut and replaced the books I am keeping, for now, in my library. I took the opportunity to take sand dunes off the top several shelves before doing so. I pulled out a couple that I pretend I will get to to read. Today might be a good time to do that as it is pouring rain in Los Angeles. The East Coast folks suffering from ridiculous cold and snow can take a bit of envy ease that we do not always get perfect weather!

Alas, the rain and darkness trigger my natural gloom and I find myself trying to hold in abeyance worries about a couple of projects more suited to a younger person with a natural optimism I seem genetically to lack. A package I sent to someone from UPS (because the post office is so bad), for which I paid 16 bucks six days ago, still has not arrived at its destination. I try not to curse about the small vagaries of life, particularly since that always sends me to confession and the priest likely wonders if I had an acquaintance with Lenny Bruce. 

I close as the rain pounds the roof of my condo. I am off I think to an hour of prayer, with a cup of coffee and trying to remember that all things are passing, including me, so lighten up!

 

Rejuvenation in Santa Barbara

One of my earliest trips in California, once I moved to Los Angeles, was to Santa Barbara. It was circa 1982, and I drove up with a visiting friend. Or my cousin Angela. Wow, so much time has passed that I am not sure with whom I had my first visit. But this I do remember, if I thought the vista that greeted me upon exiting the 10 freeway to the Pacific Coast Highway and Santa Monica was spectacular, I felt I needed an even better word to describe the main drag along the ocean in Santa Barbara. It was the first time that I ever  saw mountains in the distance which were actually purple in the sunlight, experiencing personally the line from America the Beautiful, "Purple mountains majesty". 

I have been trying to find some photos from that time, that I know I have, and was largely unsuccessful. I offer one that probably was taken around that time in Santa Monica, rather than Santa Barbara, though I am not 100 percent sure it wasn't Santa Barbara. That was me, the Djinn, in my 20s. Young people, don't blink, because life truly passes that fast. 

Any chance I can I have returned to Santa Barbara for visits. I'd drive up there with friends. We'd dine at one of the many places along Shoreline, or Stearns Wharf, or inland a bit. I very briefly dated a guy who lived in Ventura, and at least once, we spent a day in Santa Barbara, and browsed a bookshop, long gone now. I may not remember the person with whom I made my first Santa Barbara visit, for certain, but I do recall the name of the bookshop, The Earthling. It lasted until the late 1990s, driven out of business by larger brick and mortar giants. For many years, a friend whom I met at my old job at the State Bar, had parents who lived in a marvelous home next to a major hillside in Santa Barbara. When Carol, my friend, visited from the East, I would come up and spend a day or two. When her mother died in 2024, her father having done so a few years earlier, the family, scattered through the nation, sold the home. When I attended her mother's funeral, I stayed in a hotel along the Shoreline and one night, leaving family to grieve, I spent time at a small wine tasting shop, then on the Wharf, and watched the sun go down and the birds frolic, and thanked the stars and God for this taste of Paradise.

This year was a new take on the delight that is visiting Carol in Santa Barbara. She rented a home for a month along Shoreline Drive that looks out at the Pacific and the paths that folks bicycle and walk their dogs and with their kids. I got to be the first visitor, for most of two days and a night. I provide for your viewing pleasure the realtor shots for those who rent and for those who might buy. I never got to the back yard, too entranced with the front!

The drive up there was interesting this time around, a WAZE extravaganza of curving roads, the 126 and the 150, that made the trip three hours rather than the usual one and a half. I didn't check, but maybe there was something going on along the 101 that made the detour necessary. I wasn't in a rush, so I abided by the instructions, and enjoyed some different green vistas, courtesy of the deluge California received months prior to my drive. It was a visual adventure. Once I arrived to the villa, for that really is what it was, Carol and I absented ourselves so that the realtor could do a spontaneous showing for a potential six month renter. That meant lunch at a Santa Barbara Mexican restaurant in a small house like building. I was not driving this time. I had a massive Margarita, and Carol and I caught up, though alas, I am guilty of having done too much talking, being in an expansive, manic phase. 

Then shopping at a local Gelson's, a million times larger than mine in Weho, to get provisions for us and for the guests to come. It was an impulse buyer's dream space. 

Back at the house, we sat outside and watched the people strolling and playing and the dogs cavorting and pooping (happily everyone had the little pick up baggies and used them). Birds flitted, the small hummers and the ones I never recognize. To say "heavenly" would be to wildly understate the feeling. It has been a difficult few months for me, perhaps partially self-inflicted as a result of my tendency to ruminate over every task I attend to in my life--tasks that are not really commensurate with the official status of being "retired".  So this short visit was like winning a sweepstake or a prize on the Price is Right. It was visually and socially and emotionally satisfying. 

My friend Carol calling her soon to be other visitors and her home decorator 
(in Illinois where the temperatures are freezing!)

Dinner was at the newly renovated Harbor Restaurant at the Pier, right on the water. And dessert was on the terrace of Carol's master bedroom, accompanied by candles and a glass of Proseco. It really does not get better than this, and I have cherished every locale (well beyond Santa Barbara, here in Los Angeles, or in the East in good weather, like New York and New England where I could sit with a good friend or two and absorb the camaraderie). 

In the morning, I had two cups of Peets French Roast and that same terrace above, while Carol dressed and we considered where lunch (before I took off back to the inland) would be (Jennine's--what a terrific place!). I said the Rosary of Our Lady of Sorrows, which I do daily, and I admit that the sun and breeze and birds and ocean kept my mood light and thankful for the God who created this majesty. 

I was rejuvenated. Fortified. Thankful. 

Late in the afternoon, I returned to my little terrace, with a corner view toward Sunset Boulevard and the pool below. And of course, the hummingbirds that to me are just another proof of God. I really can't complain. This is good, too. My little patch of paradise.