Saved by the Book

What does it mean when someone says, "It saved my life"? Just how close were they to the edge?

Today I wandered into a cavernous room, full of natural light, ceilings high and reaching up into that great height, stacks and stacks of antiquated books. Leather bound, like the volumes in a stately home's private library, or in one of those secret collections that only historians gain access to in the library. An older man with a full head of white hair, seated behind a typewriter, looked at me quizzically before answering his own question, "Are you looking for something in particular?"

He told me most every visitor is a wanderer, straying out of the layperson-friendly Bolirium Books just across the way. His bookshop is a specialty shop for antique law books-- and he proceeded to show me court documents from Salem in the early 1800's (Dartmouth would be buying those) and other ancient legal miscellany. This place is more like his office- when he acquires something, he already knows who he should sell it to. He is something of a matchmaker, between the book and the library, whether the library be public or private.

I was so happy to be free from my terrible job, my bizarre and manipulative boss, the toxic spill that had begun leaching into the groundwork of my mind. I have time to explore, finally, this neighborhood that I live in, inhabit, but don't feel I interact with, or contribute to. This bookshop and others housed in the nondescript building I always passed on 18th and Mission comprised a fascinating floor of printed matter. You had to be buzzed in. I felt like I had entered a secret club but no password was needed, just an interest in books.

So up there on the third floor I spoke with this kindly older man who had a zest for antique legal documents and books. It was great. I suppose in theory I could imagine these kind of people existed, but I had never met one, and so I felt that much more informed of the greater scope of my fellow humankind.

Anyway, when I asked if he had been a lawyer before he said he had, and when I asked how he was enjoying his encore career in owning this shop, he said it had saved his life. I wonder how he came to rescue himself, or how these books, and this venture, came to rescue him.