Observation and Reflection- Composition 1- Yellowed Pages Bookstore

"A GOOD BOOK is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed & treasured up to purpose to a life beyond life"

-John Milton (a sign hanging in the bookstore)

“Please do not let LEO (the cat) escape. Thanks.” The little hand-written sign was the only notable thing that struck me to observe as I stood outside the Yellowed-Pages bookstore. Otherwise, the door was boring, and well, modern, the kind of entrance I’d expect to lead me into any normal, modern-day store, but I’d been here before- I knew better. I sighed, braced myself for a lot of walking and feverish writing, and opened the door.

The little bell jingled to announce my arrival. The familiar smell of old paper and dust greeted my nose. The most notable thing, of course, was the sight of thousands of books stacked on their wooden shelves. Music played from a little, old-as-the-hills radio, that kind of music I’d associate with being popular when my parents were kids; it gave you the uncanny desire to start dancing around in a circle, waving your finger around like an idiot. In its old-fashion, it matched everything else in this most ancient of bookstores.

I decided to head to the front of the store and start from there, so as to be able to walk through, describing it, and maybe make sense of it all. The place was like a labyrinth, it's wall made of books. One could get lost in the maze.

The old man who runs the place greeted me as I walked through. He's a friendly old man with white hair that seems to be yellowing just like the pages in his store, a little trim mustache, and eyes that smile behind square, black-rimmed eyeglasses. I told him that I just wanted to observe his shop for an English paper. He told me not to write about the mess.

I made it to the front door of the store facing out to 48th street that no one ever uses. I walked up to it and looked out. It was weird to think of the outside world rushing by. Time didn’t exist here. Well, maybe it did, within the books: all the time that ever was and wasn’t… I shook my head to clear my thoughts. I had to get started. I turned around to face the store. Directly in front of me were loads of records, everything from Mitch Ryder and Willie Nile to a record entitled "Gypsys, Tramps, & Thieves." Boxes littered the surrounding floor.

To the left was the Children's section, characterized by bright colors, a fun atmosphere, and generally thinner spines. A little chair stood lonely against a shelf, and looked like it would fit only the teeniest of children. To the right, a little piece of printed-paper labeled the section "General Fiction."

In a back corner of this section I plopped down on the floor to write some more. Before I began, I just sat there and looked around me. I felt rather cozy, at home; I knew that I could stay here for hours upon hours and never get bored. I would probably lose all track of time. This bookstore just had that ancient and magical air about it that I had always loved. As I looked around me, I thought about how even if a person tried really hard and dedicated all her time to it, she could never read all these books in a lifetime. It was a rather sad thought.

After I was finished writing, I walked on, turning to the left again, and I came upon a little nook, a closet of a section with a doorway made of bookshelves that you could enter through and move a few feet down to your left or your right in the enclosed area. This section was the Classics. A big, white book entitled The Yale Shakespeare sat on the floor--the biggest volume I've ever seen! And ornate Harvard Classics lined the top shelf on the back wall of the little hidden section.

I walked out of the closet and turned to the right this time where I was greeted with books that had metallic, flowing letters that spelled out titles such as Almost a Lady and Savage Hope. A poster of a cloud and little white birds flying across a blue sky designated the Romance section. Right next to the Romance section, in the center of the room stood plastic shelves holding books of a much more manly kind. Titles like Sword Point and Military Men stared out at me in bold letters.

I pressed on. After Classics Corner came “History Hideaway.” In an identical ‘nook’ to match its neighboring Classics section, all the History books sat up on their shelves, with a yellow and brown poster of the Oregon Trail labeled, “Our Colorful Past,” which sat at the top of it all.

Turning toward the center of the room again, there were rows and rows of very old Life Magazines. I picked one up, and it felt like if I made one abrupt movement the whole thing would fall apart into a million shredded pieces. I set it back down without opening it.

And moving to the right past the magazines was the old man’s desk, which could hardly be seen underneath all the clutter. It was laden with many books and an equally large amount of paperwork. There was just room enough left for his computer monitor and keyboard. Behind the desk and to the left stood a little door to who-knows-where with a cat calendar on it. There were more shelves behind and a wooden rocking chair with faded blue cushions with little pink and white patterns on them. Leo, the old man’s cat, slept soundly curled up in his little cardboard box that fit him perfectly.

Leo completes the place. He is fluffy and beautiful, a longhaired cat with dark, grayish fur. He normally roams around the place, ruling his domain as all cats do, looking up at you, making eye contact and meowing if spoken to. Whenever I meet him there, I look down and ask him how he’s doing. He is very polite and always answers me. Every old bookstore should have a cat. I smiled down at him now, adorable sleeping in the little box, until I realized that I must keep going if I want to finish today.

Walking onward, to the left again was another nook, but a much smaller one, half a nook, which was the Religion section of books. A golden plaque was mounted in the doorway, on the side of the bookshelf bearing the 23rd Psalm (the Psalm of David).

In place of the missing half of the nook, there was a little, old, gray, rather boring bathroom. Inside the bathroom were… you guessed it, more books! The books all sat inside wooden crates that used to contain fruit. To the right of the bathroom was the business section, equally small and boring, comprised of just one measly shelf.

Now, I was halfway through the maze. I came to an actual doorway that was not made of books or of bookshelves. I left the front room, and entered into the 2nd half of the store. Here, the floor was cement, and therefore it wasn’t quite as cozy as the previous room had been, but whatever it lacked in appearance, it made up for in content, for here I knew, among other interesting parts, was my favorite section: Fantasy. It possessed no label, but with just a little bit of a closer inspection, one would easily discover the section that it was. Each book I looked at had something to do with unicorns, dragons, sorcerers, and the like. This section was a large one, or rather a long one. Just one row of very tall shelves spanning the length of the entire back room. As I entered this room, to my immediate left was a little refrigerator, one that would be found in a college dorm room. I looked longingly at all the Coke cans sitting on top of it for awhile before turning to my right to explore and decipher the mini-maze of shelves over in that direction.

I went as far as I could go to the right and found a little stepper to sit on, one that’s used to reach the topmost bookshelves. I soon got up and examined this far right aisle that I found myself in. It was the Mystery section. One shelf contained Hollywood Biographies, and all down the aisle cute little carts of books were interspersed every once in awhile. Boxes were everywhere, and in the way of walking quite often. Leaving that aisle and heading back towards the left side of the room, I passed a little square formed of three walls of Western books; this section again had no label. The center section can be described, simply, as chaos. This whole half of the store had a slightly unfinished look about it. “Chaos” was a shorter aisle on account of the many boxes on the floor preventing entrance into it on one end. More records were found here and books hap-hazardously placed in boxes. Finally I walked along side the row of Fantasy novels until I reached the back door that I could leave through. I had my hand on the doorknob, ready to leave when, taking one last look around, I discovered that this wasn’t quite the end of my journey.

Looking to my right, I saw a door bearing a sign that read, “Staff Only Please." I assumed it was a sliding door; obviously, I couldn’t open it to find out. The wooden door was a little taller than a person, but even so, it was a good four feet from the top of the door until you hit the ceiling. For a curious person such as myself, it was maddening to not be able to look over the top of that door to see what was behind. As I looked at it, I thought about the old man’s desk, the little bathroom, the refrigerator… and then I wondered if maybe the door hid a bed. That seemed to be all he would need to make the store into a cozy home for himself.

Staring at the door wouldn’t make it open, for I turned instead to my left. I had to turn a corner, and another long aisle revealed itself to me. It looked like it ought to have a “Staff Only Please” sign across it, too. The first thing I noticed was the largest National Geographic collection I’ve ever seen. There were also more crates like in the bathroom and a vacuum that sat on ever more books. I turned around and there was the door. I sighed. That had taken awhile, but my journey was now complete. The labyrinth solved.

But was it really? Yes, I made it all the way through each little twist and turn, every nook, corner, and little cranny, and somehow managed to put a kind of order and classification upon it all. Yet, I realized as I looked back into this little bookstore I had just been through that there was so much more left to be solved. Each book not only contained its own story, but each was its own story. When was it written? Where? And how long did it take? How did it come to be published? After that, where did it go? Who bought it? How many hands exchanged it, turned its pages before it came to be where it is today? I pondered the stories of people inside these books (the characters), and the stories of people printed on these books (the readers), and my mind was slightly scrambled at how much, how many “stories” were actually in that room, many of which no one would ever know again or probably even think about, save for me. How could a place so interesting stay so hidden as people walked on their ways, the eyes sliding smoothly from the coffee shop to the store on the other side, skipping over the bookstore without a second thought? How much do we miss of our world around us because we are so set on our particular path through life that we refuse to search the little mazes on the edges of the road, or because we just plain don’t even see that they exist.