THRIFT SHOP
chapter 13. LIKE-MINDED #3
This is a sequel to:
This post has been translated from Dutch into English with DeepL. It will be manually edited and streamlined soon.
THE IMAGE of two trigrams: under Fire, above Heaven. From the Earth's surface, heat rises. Thermals, water vapour, condensation, clouds. Is there anything more impressive than clouds expanding in slow motion? Daily stuff? Nothing special? Instead of another trip to the mountains, stay close to home, look up, imposing mountain formations float past you, no day the same. Rediscover the humble pile cloud, the cumulus humilis. Or the imposing cumulus congestus. And at the end of a hot summer day, higher than a Himalayan giant, the cumulonimbus.
Fire below, Heaven above: the image of accumulation, like-mindedness and community. Last time, I wrote about 'In de Broeren' and other great bookstores. I like to come there, immerse myself, and be unabashedly seduced. Like in an asylum, I am looked at silently and pleadingly - take me home! - you won't regret it! Without exception, wordless dialogue follows. I have to be tough. Have to close my heart. I can't come home with a bag full of books again, like that last time, those last times. Maybe I should make a book shopping list in future, instead of this delightful aimless wandering through book paradise.
Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
Henry Ward Beecher
No, then the local thrift shop. I understand they are offered more books than they can fit on the shelves. What does get displayed then has long-lost the sheen of newness. The smell of ink has been exchanged for that of discolouration and dust.
Self-help books, beach novels, stacks of Donald Ducks, an archaic encyclopaedia and dictionaries. Many of the books I recognise from a previous visit. Would they get a new owner soon after all, you hope so for their sake.
And then your eye falls on a spine or lettering, on a book with a nice format, an unexpected title. This time: Illustrated - The Royal Geographical Society. 1997. €4. Come sit down and browse.
Tibetan Buddhists in the early 1880s pose for the camera, dressed for a traditional dance. This photograph was taken by Sarat Chandra Das, a member of the Education Department of India, who made what was at the time a hazardous and rarely accomplished visit to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, as part of his research into the Tibetan language. He published an account of his travels, in English, in 1902.
A group of nuns, photographed by John Claude White at a Tibetan nunnery, in the early 1900s. Tibetans are traditionally very devout and before the Chinese takeover of the country and the exile of the Dalai Lama in the 1950s, about twenty percent of young men were monks. Nuns, or anis, were always fewer in number, and were sometimes under the supervision of monks.
To be continued soon ...
