The Great Giveaway

Half Price 'musak' leaves much to be desired. There is something about selling your books that is just so wrong. I know, I know, most everyone leaves books in the dust and takes up the electronic gathering of metaphors and art collecting. My husband and I are unfortunately of the ilk that love books. The size of them, the weight, match their capacity to smooth out the wrinkles of the day.  Books seem to bind up tightly your cumulative wounds where the pages seem like bandages between two covers.

All of which bring me back to the depressing sounds trying to distract my conscious thinking mind from what I am doing.
Alas, my name is called. I'll be right back.
$2.50. There you go.  I cannot even purchase a Latte with this change.

I remember the disposal of so many of our books, after leaving Galveston, in 2008, following Hurricane Ike. I thought to myself, at least I'm giving cool books for my lovely island. That time I dumped so much stuff at the Goodwill Store on Seawall Blvd. Just a block away from where we were living. We gave away furniture, clothes, miscellaneous items and lots of books. Things not destroyed by rain or water or mold, like so many others. And now treasures for people who would stay. Or so I hoped.

We felt so very fortunate that our apartment was not flooded, hiding behind the great San Luis Hotel, where the mayor and important officials and media stayed through Ike. Our neighbor who stayed shared that during the eye of the hurricane, which lasted for an hour, there was absolute quiet, and it was vacuum like. No sound, no rain, no wind and a low pressure added to the surreal 2 am atmosphere. The back side, or dirty side of the hurricane came and shifted the whole 12 apartment 2 story building. Thankfully, she graciously shut our French Doors that blew open.

"The fish and eels were swimming at eye level" she relayed what she saw as being in the middle of a hurricane like Ike. The world had turned upside down and we had never experienced anything like that before, even by proxy. So we let go of stuff in one day, packed up our Golden Toyota Tundra and headed to Austin.

In other words, my 2.50 only brings back memories and I am grateful. Grateful for the experiences of change, even change that a hurricane wreaks. Mourning of the Eye, by Pamela Brouker, can be viewed on You Tube. IT was my mourning process. IT simply brought me stories of people who also suffered and survived.

And so we go, let go, and enjoy what we have, love and each other.