Love, Los Angeles: Skylight Books

I visited Skylight Books on N. Vermont Ave on a warm, breezy Tuesday evening after I had just finished reading Simon Van Booy's short story collection Love Begins in Winter. I didn't know how much I needed to read work like his--stories that shatter your heart and then very calmly and tenderly, piece it back together again. I don't want to call these fairy tales, but they have that frail spirit of bringing into fruition what you didn't think was ever possible. His stories are emotionally honest--lines press at the deepest part of your psyche and you think how true they are, how they pinpoint the most fleeting moments of recognition.

Once I finished reading, I wanted more stories. I wanted more secret entryways into the lives of people I didn't know--strangers flitting past me on downtown streets into the muddle of their own tragedies. I wanted to reach out and brush my fingertips against theirs, maybe sit on a park bench and hold their hand for awhile. Short stories make this possible. And now that I had finished a collection that had been a companion to me for weeks, I needed something to replace the void.

I looked up independent bookstores in LA and Skylight Books came up over and over again--reviews said what I wanted to hear: the people at Skylight know their books. I wanted to walk in and ask someone to give me a book they were passionate about. In my mind, it played out like a scene from a movie: I walk in, brow knitted with sweat from the dizzying Los Angeles heat and the clerk at the front desk offers me a deep, knowing nod. Soon, we're mired in passionate conversation about words and stories and the power of forging onward and upward and then there it is: their eyes light up like signal fires, fingertips brush against my elbow, they lean in close--and urgently press a book into my hands.

It didn't happen quite like this, but my experience at Skylight Books was more than fulfilling. Located on a quiet street lined with dimly lit restaurants bursting with flushed diners who spill happily onto patios late into the evening, the store has a communal vibe. Open late (everyday 10am to 10pm), it really does feel like the "neighborhood bookstore" where you stop off to pick up a book as if you were picking up a jug of milk from the dusty convenience store on the corner.  Their calendar boasts readings, signings, and discussions almost every night and I felt a little forlorn that I didn't live in LA so I could be a member of their "friends with benefits" club that offers discounts and access to special events. 

One of the gentlemen at Skylight spotted me staring blankly at shelves of books and when he asked if he could help, I pounced. I'd been waiting for just the thing. When I told him I wanted to discover a new short story collection, he spent the next ten minutes combing through the store putting together a reading buffet for me. He piled the books on the table  and went through them explaining his choices and giving me mini histories on each author. He shared collections he was currently reading, gave me a sense of writing styles, and shared authors he hadn't read, but heard great things about. He offered collections from the canon, newly launched books, as well as local Los Angeles writers. And to think that when I'd walked in, the first thing I'd looked for was a computer terminal so I could conduct my own antisocial search. Such a hermit.

From the buffet, I purchased Aimee Bender's Willful Creatures and Haruki Murakami's Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman.  Bender's stories have so far succeeded in creeping me out and making me cry (in that disconcerting, oh my goodness the ants are eating my skin from the inside kind of way)--and I suppose this is both a good and bad thing. I have to give it a fair chance before I wilt away completely. I'm looking forward to Murakami's work and am grateful for Skylight's helpful and diverse suggestions.

Read on, minions. Read on.

Mythical Skylight Cat

 

I must say that the best thing about this bookstore is that it has its own cat. She preens and stalks about like she owns the place. I think she probably does own the place. Isn't every bookstore owned by a cat?

Simon Van Booy's "The Reappearance of Strawberries"

In "The Reappearance of Strawberries" a dying man inhales the scent of strawberries and thinks of a woman he loved. This--the inhalation of that ruddy sweet scent of strawberries set in a bowl by his bedside--is the pivot point for the entire story. Gently, haltingly, the man inhales and the story unfolds, the memory inextricably linked to this specific sensory detail.

This link between smell and memory, and perhaps more significantly, emotion, is a powerful storytelling device. Smells trigger memory and the emotions attached to that memory can come flooding back with just one breath. When we're standing in one point in time and suddenly, with just a slight change in the notes of the air we breathe, we're standing in another, the feelings we've experienced in the past becoming real again in our present, the rhythm of one story infringing--or perhaps complementing and enriching--the thread of another.

For me, there's a certain scent associated with October and the night before Hallowe'en. It's this sharp  crisp air edged against this soft, yellowy light of late day. It feels like things are going to happen--and it can be late June or early Spring and it's always the same--I'll step outside and if I catch that edge, I'm eight years old again peeking out from behind curtains, lights turned off inside to sway trick-or-treaters, watching kids in cat ears and pumpkin outfits travel in multi-coloured clumps across the pavement. 

When moments like that happen--when a story from the past collides with my present, I always wonder why and grapple with whether it's supposed to mean something. We can emerge singed from difficult relationships and weeks, maybe even months later when we think we're whole again, something--a song, the smell of wet pavement, the play of light against a thick leaf in the garden--will drive that story into our present, offering it up again as some sort of trick. 

This collision of memory with the lives we wake up to each day is a purposeful method for telling a story. We can try to make meaning, or find it--the friction between our parallel lives is constantly urging us to consider and then reconsider where we are and what we've come to know. There is rarely that fulfilling release that comes in the form of epiphany or meaningful realization--nothing as easy or sweet as that and I've learned not to expect it. But I think it's something better, the real sense that something has to be lived and perhaps formed into narrative--even if just to ourselves, and in that offering up of a fragment of memory, we are being urged to simply live through it, let it be. Allow it to come, let it go, and see what can be made of it--if anything at all.

"Light effect" by John Ward

Simon Van Booy on Writing Alone

In this clip, writer Simon Van Booy comments on writing alone:

Van Booy mentions his need to be in the presence of some movement outside of himself when writing if only to remind himself that he is not alone. This external movement can help Van Booy remove himself from the bubble of solitary existence that is a writer's life. This ripple of external movement is not simply an antidote for a writer's loneliness; it is a necessary lifting of the fog to breathe the freshness of life outside your own mind. Perhaps this inhalation of the outside isn't fresh or inspiring, (it can be) but in some way it invigorates. It clarifies the muddiness of spending hours, sometimes days in solitude.

This solitary existence, living inside the story, or within a single sentence is in every way necessary--to be sequestered from the movement and colour of life so whatever has gummed itself into a solid thud in your brain can be released by a clean, stimulation free environment--empty of even the gentlest of requests from family, of roommates, of the insistence of phones, of other voices, of other people breathing. The freedom of being alone makes the brain unfold, allows you to simply focus, the necessity of living removed for a few quiet hours. The power of solitary creation is only possible after a period of accumulation, time spent living, observing, being in the world. And in the same way, the hours spent alone begin to lose their effectiveness if a ripple of movement outside the self is not permitted. 

Van Booy mentions a mirror--you write and when you look up, there's another person trying to write, just like you. The mirror is also a reflection of the writer in action--there you are doing what you should be doing, it's you taking your place in the world, living as a part of it. And in the same way, simply getting up and opening the door, staring at the blueness of the sky, the brightness of green against that blue--even this brief interlude, infraction, is enough to let yourself retreat back inside yourself, into the solitary business of getting things on the page.

"Leaves" by AuntNett