Portland, Oregon
AAfter visiting Alaska, every sunset nudged us closer to home. In Brooklyn, my cats Ruben and Little One Eye were waiting for me, growing fat, and Kate’s friends held their nightly Casper vigil. It seemed that we’d only just touched our feet to the muskeg before boarding the MV Columbia again. Good-bye, Tom and Kira, good-bye bar boys with headgear, it was very nice, we had a lovely time, good-bye. We wanted to ferry over to Sitka and visit Miyike (met on ferry #1) but there was no efficient way to do this.
Stumbling onto land at 7am, Bellingham looked exactly as we had left it seven days before, but with the scent of a story read to us from an old book, damp-smelling. We were ready for the next book. We drove south from Bellingham, quick stop for tea, another at an exit advertising “farm fresh corn!” (which we couldn’t find), another visit with Jamie in Redmond –Shall we see Seattle? No Seattle! –Hwy 5 to Portland for lunch, quick stop for gas –oughtn’t we have seen Seattle? Google-searching for vegetarian cafes in Portland, inadequacy of google forcing us to ASK FOR DIRECTIONS, circling in the car like mad to find parking, we settled finally at the corner of NW tenth and W Burnside Street.
This is also the address of Powell’s, the largest bookstore in the world. It takes up a city block and stocks a million new and used books. “Sure,” I snorted, “in the world, no less.” (Why are New Yorkers this way? Is it something in the water?) In my defense, I just couldn’t imagine a bookstore with more character, or more books, than our beloved Strand. That’s right –EIGHT MILES of BOOKS organized so haphazardly and rising a mile above your head, dumped there with such little love that you balk at any price tag over a dollar –that’s the Strand. And lest you forget where you are, notice the commode so tiny and bespattered with GOO that you’ll fairly gasp the words: New York City.
But I was not in New York, at least not yet, and I’d been roughing it for three weeks. Where’s the café in this bookstore? Happy camper Chunsoon Li wants a chai spiced latte with soy milk and Splenda. Oh, and a cookie…yes, that one…in the back under those others? Thank you. Kate left me to find a book about the Appalachian Trail, something she’s taken a keen interest in. I settled down at a table with my cookie, my tea, and my ‘top.
Powell’s bookstore is wonderful. They organise the books by title, so if you’re looking for a decent, tattered copy of Lolita circa 1955 or its current lascivious incarnation you will find them side-by-side on the shelf –okay, well, you won‘t find the rare green classic but you take my meaning: Powell‘s encourages people to buy used books. I saw a sign that proclaims: “Every day, we receive four to six thousand used books”, which somehow makes me smile and cringe at the same time. All those books, such little time, so many bookworms dying? According to their website, about three thousand people per day walk in and buy a book (Kate), and another three just browse and drink caffeine (me). People once feared that television would herald an end to reading. Powell’s garners about eighty thousand visitors, online and in-store, per day.
Just thinking about that makes me giddy.
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