I made a bookstamp for personalizing the books to be published next year. Feels weird not to have to sign and number boxes and boxes of them like I did before. This print-on-demand thing is very hard to wrap a head around.

On the publisher’s page of the new Old Style paperback, I wrote “Paperback edition of a theoretically infinite number“. The actual total will likely tally a few hundred, but who’s to say?

A lot of things are this way. K told me about a new breakfast spot around the corner from her work. She said the food was good but their website and decor were inscrutable. Apparently, it’s an “organic food concept”. Passing the place several times, I thought it was a dental studio or something. Walking into new businesses often feels like inhabiting holograms.

We’ve moved sections around enough lately that I felt it was time to update the bookstore map. This is the fourth time I’ve done so over the past three years. This space is a living, mutating organism. If there’s a “concept” or what have you, I couldn’t isolate or name it. It all depends on what people bring in through the door. The Film and Music sections keep expanding. I had to send Urban Fiction to the back room by the Mysteries to make room.

There is no inventory for what’s in the store, only the pricier books we list on eBay. No website could give any sense of what it’s like to be in these rooms. I think that’s true for any habitable space. It’s why places like that breakfast spot by K’s work are so puzzling. It doesn’t seem like they’re created to be in. They’re ideas. Imaginary. Often thought up by machines. That’s what the newer Barnes & Nobles are like. Feels like you could put your hand through every perfect tidy display. Try that at Tangible and you’ll end up with splinters and bruises.

This is how I prefer it.

When the copies of Winesburg, Ohio arrive at Mallory and Bulent’s Chicagoland abode, I’ll take the Metra out and stamp and sign as many copies as they need. It’s all I know to do to make them feel real.

Go see The Secret Agent. Might restore your faith in movies if it’s been wavering.