So, my plan for last weekend ideally involved relaxing for hours on the front porch with my feet propped up and a book in my lap. I even had my clothes picked out, white linen trousers and a thin sky-blue button-down shirt, my relaxing clothes. I wasn’t certain what I would be reading. I literally had thousands of books to choose from in my study.
Now, it goes without saying, I love reading. It’s what I do best. I’ve turned my hand toward an array of other interests during the course of my life, avocado farming, competitive duck herding, beetle fighting, but due to either my inherent incompetence or my lackadaisical nature, I’ve never excelled at anything else. I’ve owned a guitar since the age of thirteen, and I still only know two chords, but I’ve yet to manage to play them both in the same practice session, and that’s practicing at least twice annually for the last thirty-five years! Anyway, I can’t play “Smoke on the Water” but give me a good book and I will read that fucker from cover to cover, eventually, and mostly comprehend though seldom remember the words within.
I’ve entombed myself with books. My house teems with books, on every surface, in every corner. Bookcases have encroached upon every room except the kitchen. In my bedroom the bookcases are stuffed with my collection of author signed first editions and special editions. The authors range from Harry Crews to James Ellroy, from Arthur Machen to Arturo Perez-Reverte. Clive Barker and Joe R Lansdale are the most represented authors here, both writers can instantly transfer me back to my early teenage years when a new paperback from either author with their lurid cover art could set my mind to tingling with anticipation. Like an addict chasing the euphoria of the first taste, I’m forever attempting to recapture that magical feeling, but no amount of green plastic envelopes bulging with reasonably-priced hardbacks ordered off the Thriftbooks website can ever hope to compete with that soul satisfying sensation of buying the gleaming new paperback of Clive Barker’s Weaveworld, knowing your mind’s eye was about to be blown wide open by the author’s limitless imagination and inventive use of language. I can look at the bookcase and see his books, several bearing quickly sketched illustrations along with his signature, books I’d been hunting for most of my adult life, and I’m transported back to that thirteen year old lying on his narrow bed absorbed with The Yattering and Jack, Iron Maiden’s Number of the Beast spinning on the record player. I wasn’t smart enough to realize how good I had it back then. I probably wished I could have been anywhere else, doing anything else. But that’s what life looked like at its most tolerable.
I got to finally meet Clive Barker last year at one of his last convention appearances. His health had been in steady decline for years. Several throat surgeries to remove cancerous polyps had whittled his voice to a craggy whisper, painful to speak, but he expressed his admiration for the flawless Abarat books for his signature.
“You’ve kept these books in such good condition.”
“I buy these for the shelf. I buy the paperbacks to read.”
“I do the exact same thing,” he chuckled.
“Oh, good, I’ll let my wife know I’m not the only idiot around here, then.”
The thing about meeting celebrities for me, I always manage to say the wrong thing, but not before I get my signature.
I know I’ll never read all these books I’ve surrounded myself with, even as I add five to ten volumes a week. During the course of a year, I read on average between fifty and a hundred books depending on how successful I am in inspiring people to leave me the fuck alone. I’m fifty. The male Koweskis are not known for their longevity, in the pants or in terms of lifespan. I’ll never read all the R Buckminster Fuller books I’ve acquired. I know I’ll never read Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” Why did I absolutely have to possess two separate editions of it?
All I know is that the possibilities were limitless what I could read this weekend. There was a Lucia Berlin collection of short stories I aimed to finally finish. The three volumes of stories she published with Black Sparrow Press during the nineties are highly coveted. The signed editions, limited to one hundred and twenty-five copies go for up to eighteen hundred bucks. If I had that kind of money to throw around, I’d likely get a Cormac McCarthy signed novel, though I’d likely have to settled for a signed The Passenger for that price range. Which means I’d likely just try to get a few more cards to complete my Topps 1962 Mars Attacks card set. If I’m honest, I’d put that money toward buying more original Clive Barker art to add to my collection. Unless my wife reads this, in which case, any spare money would go into my credit union’s Brighter Days high yield savings account.
So many books. I’d recently gotten back into Bucky Sinister. I’d read King of the Roadkills when it first came out, loved it, then forgot all about him for twenty-five years. I’ve got some catching up to do, his poetry is piled on my desk. His novel, Black Hole, looks to be a quick read. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there’s the fourth and fifth volume of Matt Dinniman’s “Dungeon Crawler Carl” series. The books are brilliant and about as thick as a Mazda Miata. Still, I’ve been able to read several of the earlier volumes within a day or two. I have most of Ken Breun’s Jack Taylor series I’ve been meaning to read. I’d been considering dipping back into Henry Rollins work. I use to love reading his stuff in my late teens before I got burnt out on his contempt. I’ve read maybe three of the twenty Paul Theroux books stuffed on a shelf in the study.
I mention this only because I ended up playing Civilization VI all weekend long on Steam. I won a science victory. Bombed the fuck out of the Phoenicians with my nuclear arsenal in 1860. That extra wild card policy to begin the game is the difference maker. I didn’t read one fucking page. But I did write this column…
Karl Koweski is a displaced Region Rat now living in rural Alabama. He writes when his pen allows it. He’s a husband to a lovely wife and father to some fantastic kids. He collects pop culture ephemera. On most days he prefers Flash Gordon to Luke Skywalker and Neil Diamond to Elvis Presley.
THE POLISH HAMMER POETRY CORNER is a weekly column, posted each Tuesday morning.
