What does it do when we're asleep?

[sovay]

Realizing last night that I have for decades thought of myself as a full year older than I chronologically can have been for my first real job—I was fifteen—led into a crumble-to-dust reminiscence about the number of bookstores once to be found in Lexington Center, which gave me some serious future shock when we walked into Maxima while waiting to collect our order from Il Casale and it occupied the exact same storefront as my second job, also as a bookseller; it was perhaps the one form of retail to which I was natively suited. My third job was assistant-teaching Latin, but my fourth I accidentally talked my way into by recommending some titles to a fellow browser. spatch's anniversary gift to me was a paperback of Satoshi Yagisawa's Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (trans. Eric Ozawa, 2010/2023). It was teeth-shockingly cold and we all but ran with our spoils back to the car.



Still across the table.



Whichever table it may be.

We had set out in search of resplendent food and found it in polpette that reminded us of the North End, a richly smoky rigatoni with ragù of deep-braised lamb, and a basil-decorated, fanciest eggplant parmesan I have encountered in my life, capped with panna cotta in a tumble of wintrily apt pomegranate seeds. Hestia investigated delicately but dangerously. After we had recovered, Rob showed me Powwow Highway (1989) right before it expired from the unreliable buffer of TCM because he thought and was right that I would love its anger and gentleness and hereness, plus its '64 Buick which has already gone on beyond Bluesmobile by the time it is discovered in a field of clunkers and a vision of ponies. It has no budget and so much of the world. As long as we're in it, we might as well be real.

Comments

[lauradi7dw]

There may have been a time that there were four bookstores at once in Lexington center - Sundial, Waldenbooks, the used place upstairs over Decelle, and a kid's book store more or less where one of the banks is now, but I may be conflating.
Within the last year, I referred to Maxima as being where the Gap was to someone who understood.

[sovay]

There may have been a time that there were four bookstores at once in Lexington center - Sundial, Waldenbooks, the used place upstairs over Decelle, and a kid's book store more or less where one of the banks is now, but I may be conflating.

No, it was all four simultaneously because it gave me the delusion that that was a normal number of bookstores for a town center, which I still frankly stand by. Sundial, Waldenbooks, Upper Story, and the Story Loft. I do not believe that Enchantments overlapped all of the above, especially since it was relatively short-lived, but I worked at Enchantments, Waldenbooks, and the Story Loft, as well as the Waldenbooks in the Burlington Mall. Chrysalis also carried some books, but was basically just New Age. I remember perusing a lot of crystals.

Within the last year, I referred to Maxima as being where the Gap was to someone who understood.

I remember the Gap on the other side of that weird little arcade, more centrally located on the block. The Waldenbooks space was definitely spilled over into by Raveis. I believe Maxima to be part of what's left.

[moon_custafer]

I approve of this contemporary example of burnt-barn directions.

Happy anniversary! Please tell Rob the beard suits him.

[sovay]

Happy anniversary! Please tell Rob the beard suits him.

Thank you! I will.