Big Mike: My Circle On The Square

Sometimes I think I wasn’t born on this Earth, that I was dropped on it by a passing UFO from the planet Neurotica.

Maybe most people feel that way but I’m sure there are exceptions. The big shots at Goldman Sachs know in their hearts they belong here, as do Sarah Palin, Miley Cyrus, Regis Philbin, Dr. Phil, and anybody else who has achieved some level of inexplicable success and fame. This is a world, after all, wherein a billion or more people know who Tiger Woods has been biffing, what is meant by the term Octomom, and why a couple of chuckleheads named Jon and Kate have split up. Suffice it to say our standards are awfully modest.

The majority of people in the mightiest, richest, most well-fed nation in the world don’t buy Darwin’s evolution by natural selection idea. True. The Gallup organization last year asked Americans’ opinions on the 150-year-old theory and only 39 percent said they believe it. A quarter of the respondents said they didn’t and the rest, 37 percent, couldn’t say one way or the other.

I believe all available evidence supports Darwin. Had I really wanted to fit into this world (or at least this nation) I’d have typed the opposite. I surround myself with like-minded souls, of course. We titter over the benightedness of the general populace. But the truth is, those other risible fools own the world. My circle is warm and supportive — but it’s goddamned tiny. I fit in with them, sure, but that doesn’t mean I feel at home here, 93 million miles mean distance from the Sun. Sometimes I wish I possessed the happy, sleepy comfort in my surroundings that I know Sarah Palin or Dr. Phil enjoy.

But I don’t. And that’s how I ended up at The Book Case.

As I indicated a few posts back, I’m working part-time at this old-old-old-fashioned independent storefront book seller, situated picturesquely on the Bloomington, Indiana, town square.

Walk into a Barnes & Noble and you’ll have to sidestep a towering pile of the latest Dan Brown offering. You know Dan Brown — writes about Vatican intrigue, secret codes and centuries-long conspiracies with a little mushy romance thrown in here and there. He sells as many books as Sarah Palin. Enter The Book Case, though, and you’ll be confronted with a wall of Penguin Classics. Constance, the proprietor, is especially proud of her Penguin collection. She hints it may be the largest single such repository in the country. Here are a couple of Penguin Classics titles: “The Souls of Black Folk” by W.E.B. DuBois and “Stung with Love: Poems and Fragments” by Sappho. I heard a rumor that somebody bought a copy of the DuBois book sometime last winter.

“If I was trying to be rich, I wouldn’t be in this business,” Constance says.

Merely by uttering that statement out loud, Constance has indicted herself as a certifiable nut. I think she’ll be part of my new circle here.

In addition to me, Constance has a couple of other employees. There’s Lillith, a tiny Tennessean with an endearing twang. She sacrificed a writing career and several other potential vocations in order to support her husband’s academic aspirations. She felt sure that once he achieved tenure, she could concentrate on her career. Sadly, when her husband reached the point at which he could hire a secretary, he elected to run off with said assistant. Now Lillith must spend her days ordering books to keep her head above water and hoping one day to put her university degree to more financially rewarding use.

I’d tried to reach Lillith by email a few days ago to ask her some question or another about an order. We finally spoke yesterday at the shop. “Sorry I didn’t get back to you,” she said. “I was busy pulling the drapes shut and laying on my couch in a funk.” She’s part of my new circle.

Camille also works at The Book Case. She’s built solidly and has a small hoop in her left nostril. She wears tie-dyed T-shirts and sometimes breaks out in an impromptu frug when trying to remember where she put that new book by Michael Chabon. After she gave birth to two sons, Camille’s husband decided to leave the house one morning and never return. “Haven’t seen him since,” she says with a shrug. “That’s okay by me.”

In the evening, Camille skates in the Bleeding Heartland Rollergirls league. One late afternoon near closing time, Camille sighed and said, “I can’t wait to skate tonight. I feel frustrated and I need to take it out on somebody.” She, too, is in my new circle.

Nobody really makes any money at The Book Case. If we were all that interested in wealth, we wouldn’t have time to read that new Penguin Classics translation of Sappho. We’d be reading “The Souls of Black Folk,” too, but somebody bought the only copy sometime last winter.

It’s a goddamned tiny world but it’s warm and comforting.

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