i’m back at work again from my three week vacation, which means i’m back on my bullshit and lunchtime walks to visit birds in the park or blog in the coffee shop, or take a stroll to the really cheap thrift store that’s right by my work.
i like that thrift store because it’s ran by this group of older ladies who take it all very seriously and look very serious in that powdery no-bullshit way that some older ladies tend to have about them – all elizabeth taylor ‘white diamonds’ and gold rings from husbands with bad hearts and long white hair caught up in barettes and grim lines where smiles used to be type of thing. they’re beautiful and i like watching them. they know my name and my comings and goings. i’m the old photograph girl, the vhs tape girl, the antique jewelry girl, the incense girl, and the religious girl.
i’ll come in sometimes to visit them and see how they are, searching for conversation just as much as i am for sterling silver and old bones or little leather cases for my smudge supplies. sometimes they’ll have a little something put aside for me behind the counter like they’re my personal shoppers. once it was a little case of those spindly wire frame glasses everyone wore in the early 1900s, sometimes it’s tarnished crosses or scapular medals, sometime’s it’s crystals or carved sticks or an old photo of someone who died before i was born.
i feel kind of special when there’s a little something for me. it’s always nice to feel seen even for a moment.
i like those kinds of thrift stores the best. you know the ones where everything is really cheap and the finds are immaculate but you kinda gotta work for it. for every 1950s vintage silk garter belt in your size you have to sift through a pile of farted out wal-mart brand sweatpants and shirts someone’s dad wore in 1993 because it came free from a work event and he needed something to wear while mowing the lawn in order to get out of the hunter green dusty rose nightmare his bitch of a wife had turned the house into.
for every antique art deco ring shaped like a heart, you’ve got to sift through boxes of tamagotchis and beyblades, and microwave cookbooks from the 1970s. maybe that’s why i like the hunt so much – makes you feel like you earned it, you know? like a wizard on a quest in some dungeons and dragons ass fucking ass shit ya know?
i also like this thrift shop because the book section is great. books are usually $0.25 or $1. I buy cheap books and cut them up or scan them. sometimes i just like to get lost in the book section and while away a few of the precious minutes of my lunchbreak reading about frogs or ducks or how to properly clean and dismantle an old VCR.
one time i found a first edition copy of frank herbert’s dune for $1 and this weird occult volume about angels and yahweh that sells for like $300 online to fake ass instagram witch influencers. i read about half of it but it kinda lost me a little and i ended up watching old episodes of buffy the vampire slayer instead and i haven’t gotten back around to reading about the “enochian truth” yet, but i will.
anyways. i’m distracted at the thrift today and my jacket is too warm and i can feel the tag in my sweater and there’s these two ladies blocking my access to the book section. they’re both struggling to breathe in an asthmatic way through puffy faces with too red candy apple lips while they explain tiktoks and memes they’ve seen on the internet to each other in high piercing tenor voices. i’m instantly annoyed and feel the unhealed parts of myself bubble to the surface and i want to say something mean but of course i don’t. i want to say that i’m a bit lonely and tired and that i miss my lover quite badly and i’ve been thinking about sex the whole time i’ve been browsing candles and dishes and doilies and stinky old out of style clothing – waterfall cardigans, anyone? no? not even for $1? come on, take a chance.
i’m thinking about sex and love and romance and what it’s like to be almost 40 and newly fallen in love somehow and how everything’s crazy because i locked my heart up in 2016 when she died and put the whole thing on ice and my underwear is too loose because i keep losing weight and i can feel my toe ring on my left foot for some reason and won’t you please just get the fuck out of my way so i can read poetry and daydream about collages and martyrs from the 13th century in peace without having to listen to two braying asses trying to remember the punchlines from tiktoks that made sense several months ago?
i stand there looking crazy and they eventually take the hint and i can browse the books in peace.
i find an old book with a cloth cover that smells like my grandfather’s workshop at the house i spent my childhood in and it makes me nostalgic. it’s about animals and plants from alberta and there’s cool inky illustrations of bugs and leaves and ferns and it’s $0.50 and i decide to buy it and scan pages for my blog, for my own amusement.
i’m about to leave and i find this book, lonely on a shelf next to that fake ass “a million little pieces” book and a couple discarded jordan peterson volumes:
it’s a collected volume of mystic poets from india and their verses, written in 1941 and later republished in 1963. i’ve been feeling a lil mystical lately and doing a lot of learning about various religions and i like reading about holy people and insane people and poets with addictions and religious experiences. i page through the book while i’m thinking about my lover’s hands and his accent and his crooked eye and deep laugh. i’m thinking about fucking and that uncontrollable urge i get sometimes to just sink my teeth into his arm or shoulder and i wonder how hard i could bite down before i’d actually do some damage.
i know i’m going to buy this book to read while sipping lime bubly sparkling water on my lunchbreaks because i have to be the most esoteric bitch that reeks of sage anywhere i go apparently.
paging through it in the thrift shop that smells like cannabis and window cleaner i find this:
and, damn, ok, i wasn’t exactly expecting to be read to filth by an indian poet called harischandra who was born in 1850 and lived in british india, and yet, hey here we are. (he died in 1885 at the age of 34 btw)
god, i love the whole “love as cannibalism” stuff just as much as i love comparing love and the act of love to religious experience, because, like, how true?
when people ask about religion and spiritual experiences, or rather, when that stuff comes up at parties or events, usually after a few drinks, i tell people that some of the most religious experiences i have had have been simple and this seems to flummox some people.
the first time i saw someone die, is one. call it my siddhartha moment i suppose.
the first time i attended stonehenge.
lighting a candle in the notre dame cathedral.
and, love, of course. everytime i have been in it. god, how can love not be a spiritual reverie directly from the heavens? those little moments with someone like the first time you kiss or the first time you share a washcloth or a toothbrush or see each other naked, and no, i’m not meaning like fucking naked, in a sexy way, but just in a human way. the way you take your pajamas off in the morning and bend over with your whole ass out to go rooting around in your sock drawer for that matching sock you could swore you had the other day, you know the one that says “god is a woman”?
i know lots of people who have had many other bigger moments than mine, and i wonder if they think about them like i do. i guess i don’t care, but i always have wondered if i was the only one sweating through my leather jacket high on wal-mart brand gravol having a moment in direct proximity to something bigger that day at stonehenge? was it just me choking down tears as i realized how small and insignificant and meaningless i, and therefore everything else truly is in the grand scheme of the vastness of time and the universe?
o great coyote, who am i?
do other people think these thoughts or is it just me being fucked up?
sometimes it seems like other people are more along the lines of donkeys in the thrift store describing tiktoks they saw, but if i think like that it’s an ego trap, because i’m not like, levitating above the rest of us somehow because i think about god and the devil and the dust of time and burn a lil sweetgrass.
so i pay the nice ladies for my books and i think about sex and halloween candy and i see two crows at the park yelling at each other over something.
as always, i say, “hi baby!” to them. my lunchbreak is almost over and i should be getting back.
hospital vespers 