[Essay] Breathing Books

America happens to me. It happens when other places don’t.

There’s magic.

You need to look at the neon cords of traffic from a hotel up high in LA if you don’t believe me.

That’s why I couldn’t ever be an American, even though, hey, why not? But it happens to me, that buzz of electricity--and that’s something Americans in their everyday states of being can never really understand. Or do they? This is the only sliver of understanding I have to offer. If it happened to me daily, I’d be done. It would be too much to take in.

There’s something to be said about slow savoring.

America treats the outsider, the foreigner, or the traveler differently than its own or those who choose her. Americans often expect to expect. To some, the Sunset Strip is just a road. And California and its culture is sometimes taken as much the same, except draped in that great golden light. It’s that taut ribbon of fog rolling into San Francisco. It’s that thrill in finding the steepest parking spot in the world to get to Ferlinghetti’s City Lights bookstore. And it’s the caffeine trip of driving all night to get to San Francisco just to visit a bookstore and spend a day a little closer to words that make things right again. There are fault lines, spiritual and mystical, at work where what’s considered everyday by the locals just isn’t.

This isn’t an advertisement for City Lights, but the store itself is more than a place to shop. Years ago, I drove all night from the L.A. area to get some books, have some good coffee, and eat some meatballs. It wasn’t some new version of a Greek classic, but it’s a special memory given how delicate or precarious life has become for bookstores. So, when it came close to closing a few years ago, that and the pandemic shook up a lot of memories.

Great highways and rental cars with unlimited miles can take a visitor a long way in a short time in California. I always felt that trips down to the United States were too rushed, and that was true this time, too. A friend and I had escaped winter and got cheap tickets to L.A.

Turned out, staying at a really cheap motel somewhere between Compton and Watts hadn’t been fatal and we were able to hit the road out of the city pretty easily (for a couple of hicks from Canada). Again, things were a bit tougher in Watts and Compton back then (but the music was better), but to be honest, everyone at the motel had been kind. Even the peculiarly dressed ‘ladies’ had been helpful in telling us it was a good idea to get out of LA! I was surprised that some still found evening gowns and long cigarette holders fashionable!

There are a thousand great themes for trips in and around Los Angeles; musical, historical, and literary. You name it. I wanted to get a feel for Steinbeck, and so the Salinas valley and the whole area around the Monterey peninsula made up short stops to get a sense of the landscape and the setting. I wanted to see what Steinbeck had seen, and that was a contrast to the settings in his books. Of course, to me the places seemed better than described and, given the mild California winter, we could even enjoy some great California wines, cheese, bread, and lots of other goodies. The burgers were great too—melty, melty cheeseburgers. Nothing to take for granted!

But moving on, I really wanted to get to City Lights and buy some books and soak up some of the atmosphere. Chain bookstores were expanding everywhere, but there were a few lighthouses still standing.

Ferlinghetti was a favorite poet, and the simple evocative wordplay that he put down was bound up in that place, that store, that United States, that San Francisco. I just didn’t and don’t believe many other places could have produced a Ferlinghetti—that’s my bias. How do you produce a Ferlinghetti, by the way?

I wanted to consume the place and poetry, or drink it like coffee. Bowl after bowl. Rubbing pages together, coffee, and bookstore smell in the morning. I was immature. I wanted to hold onto those feelings and grip the poetry like a cold paper receipt. I naively wondered if Jack Hirschman would jump out from behind the shelves and say something that would make me a believer in his United States!

My prior visits to California were for beaches, concerts, and to pass through on longer trips. They were tangible visits in some ways and I hoped the writing and the poetry from Ferlinghetti, Hirschman, and the many others would somehow wash over me like California waves and be sticky, like ocean salt. But this was hunting, no better than some big game aficionado fleeing Mombasa for the hunt.

It was arrogant, but I thought I could own or grasp the consciousness and feeling of reading a lot of poetry that had come out of San Francisco. I needed it, that need to sense a connection or greater power. So, finding City Lights wasn’t the hard part, and after the all night drive, the hills were something to get used to. I wasn’t very awake. I remember parking and somehow the car almost falling down a hill, with one of my legs dragging out the door and an arm locked to the steering wheel.

Truckers say fatigue is a killer, and I learned that. We figured out the emergency brake really quickly and made note of it. As cheap Canadians, we also weren’t used to paying that much for parking either. Half the sole of my shoe was worn off from gripping the road, so we limped to the store finally.

I liked the windows and I liked the light. I inhaled the place cover to cover. I breathed books. The crisp papered air floated around, and some of the customers gave me dirty looks as I smiled  and they dug their schnozzes deeper, pecking at pages. The clerk told me Ferlinghetti was somewhere and if I waited I could have a word. A few days earlier I might have been lucky to get a word with a snow plow. Beep! Beep! A word with Ferlinghetti was worth waiting for.

In America, the San Francisco of the world, a word was great.

I should have been buying some of the poetry books, but after finally getting there I settled on reading for a while and trying to inventory the selection. I wanted to remember the place, the shelves, and the books that took me anywhere I wanted to go. I felt this dire need, after being caffeinated and transported to book wonderland, and it felt like I had been shot out of a slingshot from the puddle of a prairie town I had been living in. I was happy to just breathe San Francisco and books. Where were the poetry crowds?

My chat with Ferlinghetti was low-key and I was happy to play my little part in the cosmic relationship with the store and the friendly Ferlinghetti. It was another example of America happening to me. This guy in a sweater was a genius. If Corso had been a crown prince of the Beats, Ferlinghetti had been the surgeon or doctor of words. He told me something about the wonders of being a transplant in San Francisco and I couldn’t understand exactly what he meant, because I had only been to San Francisco a couple of times.

Seems like San Francisco happened to Ferlinghetti.

But life had shot me from small prairie town misery and snowbanks higher than our rental car, to chatting with a kind poetic genius in a sweater. Word surgeon, player with words. There was no time to waste and it wasn’t hard to find a coffee shop for more cappuccino by the bowlful. “San Francisco soup”, as I called them. Then it was time to hunt for famous Italian meatballs and try to digest the short time in a magical shop in a magical city.

I haven’t gotten back yet. I should.

America happens to me. I still remember my chat with Ferlinghetti and City Lights…any mention of the place takes me back. It’s been a long time since then and I don’t know if poetry waves flowed over me, beach tar licked my heel, or fog stuck in my ears, but there’s something to be said about quiet times in a bookstore. It was a chance to actually chat with the poets and writers that shape the dreams and souls of the greatest nations.

America happens to me. Some part of me wishes that San Francisco happened to me like it had for Ferlinghetti, but at least I collected some snapshots to keep in my wallet. Maybe America happens to Americans too. I hope so. Lucky you. Look at what you have in your back yard. I hope you see some friendly genius of poetry out there in a sweater watering the plants. I did and I hope I still do.

Mike Sluchinski knows El Shaddai lives in rainstorms, so he threw his umbrella away! Thank you to a bunch of great readers and editors and take time to read The Wave (Kelp), The Literary Review of Canada, The Coachella Review, Inlandia, Welter, Poemeleon, Lit Shark, Proud To Be Vol. 13, The Ekphrastic Review, MMPP (Meow Meow Pow Pow), Kelp Journal, ‘the fib review’, Eternal Haunted Summer, Syncopation Lit. Journal, South Florida Poetry Journal (SOFLOPOJO), Freefall, pulpmag and more coming!