If Anais Nin had been my mother we would have compared eye liner. Or so I like to imagine.
Kohl around the lash line, water line – smudged at the edges, dirty, sultry – is something I know the two of us could have shared. A bond. My bird-like little literary lady-mama. Absolutely no giggling here, though. No. As a mother/daughter pair, Anais Nin and I would have created a velvety black sphere of sinuous bond over eye make-up, over the way to draw a perfect arch into the brow. Over men. Velvety black spheres, folks – not carnation pink bubbles. Anais Nin would have been the kind of mother that does not hold hands.
Or so I like to imagine.
And I imagine all this about smoky eyeliner because on the back of my copy of Henry & June is a picture of Anais Nin with her pointed-little-pixie chin cradled in her pointed-little-pixie hands staring at the camera with pointed-pixie eyes rimmed in black – with eyebrows sharp like punctuation. I was immediately smitten.
Hello little she-devil soul, I said to myself. You are fragile, and I love you, I said to myself.
I said to myself – standing, blocking up the aisle, spacey, at a used book sale. In the best Life Moments we are always alone in the world and totally in the way no matter the crowd. Like the crowd at a used book sale. I bought a 1986 edition of Henry & June in hardcover with Anais Nin’s eyes on the back. That book was a dollar. It changed my life.
Wouldn’t you also like to meet your soul-parent on a dust jacket? Let me help you: This weekend marks another round of wheeling, dealing and oodles of good Old-Book-Smell as Locust Grove [4] hosts their annual Spring Used Book Sale, today through Sunday, March 1st – 3rd from 10am to 4:30pm each day.
Offering up some 14,000 + used, antiquarian and new titles in all categories, the sale is an easy way to stuff your shelves with a fresh round of histories, biographies, mysteries, cookbooks, fiction, reference, children’s and just about any other genre known to man - as well as CDs, DVDs and audiobooks. Prices begin at $1 for paperbacks and $2 for most hardcovers, with a special section of individually-priced rare and illustrated books for collectors. As usual, the gloves come off on Sunday with a $10 last-day-deal for whatever you can fit (stuff greedily) into a bag – or pay half-price on all books.
I’ll be there on Sunday. Really. Come find me. It will be easy to pick me out in the crowd. I’ll probably be spaced-out in an aisle, in the way, scanning all the spines for my mother’s eyes. Because I gave my copy of Henry & June – my 1986 copy with Anais Nin’s foxy little face – to an attractive man after a little too much gin. I wanted to change his life. Now I need a new one. So that will be me: the tiny spacey person with the obscenely-filled bag, dark hair and – yes, oh yes – much black eyeliner.
Locust Grove is located at 561 Blankenbaker Lane.
Images: Courtesy of Photobucket www.photobucket.com [5]
