Books on Books Display; Comfort & Greatness

I've been saving donated books with book-related titles at work for a couple months. I finally had enough to set up a display yesterday. 
Here're most of the books. (I added The Guernsey Literate-Potato Society, and Carlos Ruiz Zafón's Shadow of the Wind (which I felt I should like, but didn't).)

I donated ^ Remainders of the Day,which I regret buying (full price!). It's the third and the worst of Shaun Bythell's bookseller's diaries. He's the worst in it--complaining, for instance, about the odor of an old lady whose books he goes to buy.
I understand from experience how frustrating customers can be, but he sinks well below that understandable annoyance.
I don't know if I can ever re-read his second diary with any enjoyment--he doesn't seem so mean-spirited in that one, and I'd liked it.

I no longer bother with novels that use books as a backdrop for romance, like a movie set--with titles like, The Belgian Bookstore, Bakery, & Damaged Giraffe-Keepers Rescue Society.  They're like petits-fours--far nicer to look at than to ingest.
Exception:
84, Charing Cross Road, but maybe because I loved the movie with Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins before I read the book?
Well, even if that's the case--I do like the book and have and will read it again.

But really, Johnny Lion's Book illustrated by Clement Hurd is the best of the lot. There are two copies--I should nab one for myself. Why didn't I before I left yesterday? Ergh. I'm not back till Thursday because my sister and I are driving to a little town in Iowa for a two-night stay in a bnb. It's going to be as cold there as it is here--barely above 0ºF... but I don't care. It's VACATION! That's even worth losing a copy of Johnny Lion.

Baby Sems at the Laundromat Burger Joint

It will be extra nice to have a vacation because while it was wonderful to spend time with the baby sems who were volunteering at the store, it wrung me out. I was recovering from a cold, and talking so much in the past couple weeks, especially outside in the cold, made my throat sore. But, more, I poured myself out--made myself emotionally open--and that's draining.

I'm totally glad I did it though--and it had the desired effect--to show these future priests the complexity of the neighborhood.
Big Boss went to their seminary to talk to them, and he told me they all talked about spending time with me, and how much they got from seeing through my eyes.
Okay, then!

The last pair of sems I took to a crummy little burger joint down the street, attached to a laundromat. It faces the parking lot, and always open to the laundromat, it smells like hot dryer air and laundry soap.

I told them I'd discovered it when I was doing laundry for a store's neighbor who was sick. (That was BJ, when she was dying of lung cancer last year, but I didn't go into all that.) She'd given me ten bucks to buy myself lunch while her laundry spun. I'd thought it'd be nasty, but the few things on the menu are all tasty--it's like the laundry people thought, "Hey, we can fry a burger, let's fry a burger."

My theme with the sems––I hadn't intended to have one, but it turned out I did––was how I realized (again, again, again) that I can't do BIG things, like save people, but I can show up, and say hello (and maybe sometimes do someone's laundry);
and while that's not enough, it's what I can do, and religion--seeing things in a religious context--helps me do that––and that's all good.

I could say "a fairy-tale context" instead---or philosophical or ontological, or whatever, but because of my audience, I said "religous", and that's true:
I've written here before and I said to each of the sems that a big thing that helped me carry on this fall when I was feeling so angry and useless and angry (and useless)––and disgusted with the therapist I'd tried––was a priest saying, You are not the savior. 

I know I'm not God, in theory––I don't even believe in God!––but geez, sometimes I am hard on myself for not being; and hearing that right then jolted me out of my near-despair, and helped answer my question, as I said to the sems,
How do you keep showing up when you know you'll be uncomfortable---AND you'll fail?

You lighten the fuck up!
(I said this, and they laughed.)
It's not failure--it's life. (But sometimes is is our failure too.) At any rate, life is bigger than us.
And it won't kill you to be uncomfortable. (Usually. And if it does? . . . Well?)

These two sems were my favorite--that's probably why I took them out to eat. (They said they weren't hungry, but they let me buy fries to share.) They each quoted something really sweet to me.

One quoted Pope Benedict--that we're not made for comfort, we're made for greatness.

And the other--in a different part of the conversation, but making a nice tag--said that what I was talking about was what Teresa of Calcutta said:
that we can't all do great things, but we can all do small things with great love.

What sweeties!
I wish I'd thought to quote back to them one of my favorites--from Samuel Beckett,

"Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

Some of the other sems I didn't care for--I felt they'd become the sort of priests I don't like--officious, and stingy with their hearts. As a friend in the Church said, "the sort who like lace trim on their vestments". (This is not about sexuality, it's about power-- the power of perceived purity.)

And now I want to go stare at Iowa, which is flat and covered in snow. Perfect.

Write the Thing

A friend sent me the first five chapters of his novel, and I felt such a pang of envy when I read it this weekend.
Not because I loved it---it's good, but it's a world-building novel, along the lines of Frank Herbert's Dune, which I don't have much patience for--but simply because, bygod, he did it, he WROTE the thing.

I could discern in reading it how much pleasure he must have gotten from writing it---or, more like in designing it--figuring out the pieces of the world and how they all slot together--and then move along in synch...
So much work, but what a pleasure to figure out your own world.
(I always marvel at that in Harry Potter too--JKR must have gotten so much pleasure constructing her world--as well as so much frustration, I'd imagine.)

I'd told myself I would write a short story this year--and my friend's novel (it's massive) nudges me to DO THAT. Just for the mental exercise--like taking psychedelics, but so much more plain old drudgery.

We can't all write a great novel, but we can write a short story with great discomfort.
I'll try that.

And for company...

Po! She will be going to live in Berlin with Fiona, who had a Po just like this when she was a little girl.
But in the meantime, Po is my Lighten Up & Be a Fatty Dumpling Guide.