Bookstores

There are bookstores you go into to grab the Harpers and gum or the Atlantic Monthly and a ta'im' Twix bar. There are other bookstores you go to to pick up the books you know you want, and you will find Murakami and Nabokov, conveniently close to each other. Others you go to for coffee perhaps. But still others transcend: you go in to get versions marked up by reviewers, for signed first editions, for rares, and finally the rare others where there is no book or author you recognize, your world is turned upside down, the covers outside and the words inside allure and you rush home even while leaves fall all around you so you can just write because you must.