I will admit, these books were actually picked out of my unread stack. We’ve all got that stack, right? Right?
No one plans to die.
Alright, that’s not true – there’s the whole dying with dignity euthanasia thing. But I’m talking about during the normal passing of our lives. Actually, I guess some suicides are planned, right? Fine, euthanasia, suicide… I’m sure there’s something I’ll remember.
Okay, okay, I didn’t plan on dying. And I didn’t plan on dying so goddamn quickly. Life was humming along. My career was progressing, there was a boy I was seeing, I owned my own condo in the Sunset, and I’d even managed to read the top book in the stack of books I kept next to my bed – Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad. Julius (the aforementioned boy) gave it to me, said I had to read it. That’s why it was on the top of the stack. That’s why it got read. I was ready to dazzle him with my insightful take on the way Whitehead melded realism and allegory when I got sick.
Okay, I had trouble breathing. And that turned into a thing. Well, the thing was cancer. And it was so far past the point of just being a thing. Fucking cancer, am I right?
Four weeks.
Four weeks from that trouble breathing to my deathbed (Julius wasn’t there – I never heard from him after the diagnosis). My sisters were there, though. Bless them. They split duties after I passed – Julie handled, well, me. Cremation, memorial service, ash scattering – all that jazz. Theresa closed out my estate. That sounds so fancy. Really, she had to wade through 34 years of my accumulated shit.
Watching from this side and not being able to help… Well, that’s another story entirely.
One thing I focused on was that stack of unread books next to the bed. I don’t know why I fixated on them… No, I do. They were the embodiment of everything I planned to do but didn’t. Couldn’t. Didn’t get a chance to. Theresa and Julie looked through all my books, picked out the ones they wanted to keep and then gave the rest to the San Francisco library to do what they wanted with them – stock them, resell, them, thrown them out…
I had a fair amount of books, mind you, but that stack of a dozen books that I was going to get to… It’s funny how recall is in the afterlife. I can see that stack so perfectly clearly, read each and every spine individually…
Julie moved into my condo – good for her! Go Julie! But it wasn’t my space, and I didn’t want to haunt her new abode, so I decided I would find those unread books and read them. Not just the books in general. I set out to find my books – the actual books from that stack next to my bed.
How does one go about finding books lost to the world you might ask? Turns out, if you’re a ghost it’s not that hard. I pictured the book I was looking for – I picked out the one I wanted in that image of the stack in my head and focused on that one particular title, the spine, the way that book must feel in my hand, what it must smell like…
I was in the San Francisco Library – not the main branch. It was the Noe Valley branch on Castro. It was a quiet midday and I found myself in the middle of the stacks. I looked up and the book I had focused on was right there on the shelf. Strange Piece of Paradise by Terri Jentz. I reached for it and was shocked that my hand closed around the spine – interestingly, I passed right through the books next to it, but this book I could touch. I pulled it off the shelf and carried it to one of the comfy chairs that looked out on the street and I sat down to read it.
If anyone else noticed a book come off the shelf by itself and float over to a chair where it was opened and pages were turned, they kept it to themselves. I took my time reading about Jentz as a young woman with her friend on a cross-country bicycle trip camping in eastern Oregon when a man in a truck deliberately ran over their tent and then savagely beat them with an axe. Both women survived and 15 years later Jentz returns and tries to solve the crime.
I think I must have heard an interview with Jentz on NPR years ago – that seems right, right? I don’t remember when I bought the book, but it had been in my stack for a long time. So, I took my time with it – I don’t remember how many days passed. I’d read until I was tired (yes, ghosts get tired! At least this one does), put the book down, rest, and the next day take if back off the shelves (those librarians were fast!) and pick up where I left off. When I finally closed the book I felt rejuvenated and wanted to keep going.
I focused on the next book in the stack, pictured the book in my mind’s eye, felt it’s small stature and the color, and…
I was standing in the most gorgeous room I’d ever imagined. Floor to ceiling windows looked out over a valley with the bay… That was San Francisco in the distance. Oakland Hills. I was in the Oakland Hills. I looked around the room and the walls were dominated by bookshelves filled to overflowing. A small desk sat unobtrusively in the corner – notably not looking out the window for some reason. Looking around I surmised that this person was a rather successful writer – I’d heard of her (no, her books weren’t in my Stack, but I’d heard of her). And on her bookshelf was my copy of B. H. Fairchild’s Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest collection of poetry.
This book was given to me, I remember that. By whom… I don’t remember. I remember reading about B. H. Fairchild, a Midwestern poet. I turned to the titular poem and luxuriated in the words:
In his fifth year the son, deep in the backseat
of his father’s Ford and the mysterium
of time, holds time in memory with words,
night, this night, on the way to a stalled rig south
of Kiowa Creek where the plains wind stacks
the skeletons of weeds on barbed-wire fences
and rattles the battered DeKalb sign to make
the child think of time in its passing, of death.
My apologies to the author whose house I was now haunting because, though the book wasn’t long, I read and re-read and read the thing again. I gave each and every poem the time and attention it deserved and I never could in life.
I could tell I was freaking her out a little bit – understandable seeing as every time she came into her writing space she’d find Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest laying on the table and every day she’d reshelve it. But spending that much time in that poetry really loosened my spirit.
When I finished it for the eighth time, I decided it was time to move on. Like all good poetry, I vowed to revisit it, and I explained to the author that I’d be back from time to time to read in her writing space. She didn’t have any clue I was talking to her, of course, but at least I felt better for it.
I focused on the next book and found myself sitting on a curb in suburban Fairfield. It was an older neighborhood – houses of different shapes and landscaping dotted the cul-de-sac. This wasn’t a cookie-cutter community and the various cars and RVs and boats in the driveway told me no HOA was invoked here. I felt better about being in the suburbs. But where was my book? I turned around and found myself face to face with one of those adorable little neighborhood lending libraries. It was painted bright colors – likely by kids who were taking and contributing titles to it.
Looking over the contents, I was heartened to see something for just about every age group from picture books to Infinite Jest because of course fucking Infinite Jest. But there among them was my copy of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. I bought it second hand when I was in college from a little bookstore downtown. This one I actually did crack the cover before. I just… never got further than a couple chapters in. I don’t know what it was – Pynchon’s prose? The protagonist? I just could not get into it.
Which made it a great book to approach now that I was dead!
This wasn’t the first Pynchon I’d read, but for some reason this one always stymied me. I know it’s supposed to be his master work, but…
Okay, it was good. I mean, of course it was good. But of all the books so far, this felt like doing work. Not necessarily in a bad way, though. I estimated by this point I’d been dead for two years and this was the first time I really pushed myself to do something I didn’t want to do.
I will say, dear reader, it was not easy. Or fast. But I persevered. When I finished the book I was glad for my accomplishment.
I was also ready for my next book.
I focused on this book and found myself in the desert. Okay, not like in the sand. No, I was in a beautiful cottage. Looking around at the modern architecture and sterile furnishings, I determined it was an Airbnb outside Beatty, Nevada.
Of course I was.
I looked to the carefully curated bookshelves and found my copy of Richard E. Lingenfelter’s Death Valley and the Amargosa: A Land of Illusion artfully positioned on a shelf. On one hand it just seemed so… I don’t know… cliché – a book about Death Valley in an Airbnb outside of – wait for it – Death Valley! On the other hand… it kinda felt like it returned home. I put cynical Lauren to bed and took the book off the shelf and went out onto the patio.
I could tell it was hot – I didn’t know what time of year it was, but it was definitely over a hundred degrees – but it didn’t bother me. I guess that’s another benefit of being a ghost – you don’t sweat? Weird spooky flex, but okay…
I sat on one of the lounge chairs and started to read the book. In many ways this book was as dry as the desert it covered. Bless Mr. Lingenfelter, but he writes some dry history. But it was perfect for me. I read some, then explored the hills and valleys and came back to the Airbnb and read some more. Being able to effortlessly move across the vast desert distances instantly was another nice perk of being dead. The more I read and the more I explored, the more peace I found in the solitude.
I remember visiting the desert with my parents as a child. I felt small and utterly insignificant in the enormous expanse of empty space. Reading Lingenfelter’s book reminded me just how insignificant we all are in this inhospitable landscape.
And that realization was freeing.
I wasn’t finished with the book yet when The Light™ appeared. It was straight out of Central Casting – brighter than the sun, there was even some kind of ethereal angelic choral music bullshit. I guess I was ready to go. I could see my family members that had passed on inside the light. They were smiling and waiting for me.
I took a step closer to the light, cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled over the din of those goddamn angels, “I’m not finished with my book yet!”
They looked confused.
“And there’s still like seven more books after that!”
