Our local Border's Books and Music closes for good Tuesday, but today was probably my last chance to go by -- and judging from the shelves, my last chance to find something to buy, as well.
This particular store holds a lot of my history, as related before here. So I went more to walk around and look and remember than to find bargains. Here's some of what I saw.
1) This album, which may be the very copy that came marked as my order by mistake. I thought about buying it but I never really liked the title track and it was the only one I'd ever heard. Apart from the gentleman from DeKalb, Illinois who had ordered the album I mistakenly received, I guess I don't know anyone else who liked it either.
2) Empty shelves. Seeing anyone's business and livelihood reduced to bare walls is kind of sad, but when the shelves in question once held all manner of thoughts and explorations, that's kind of magnified. The history of real people who lived and died and affected their world -- and in turn, affected ours. People who reflected on what it meant to be a person and how to try to live a life of significance, sometimes through the novelists' fiction and sometimes through the philosophers' essays. But now nothing.
3) The irony of hearing "Video Killed the Radio Star" while browsing among the remains at a bookstore going out of business. I hope the empty shelves are less prophetic than were the Buggles.
4) A friend, going away.
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