The Lives That We're Living
Jan. 20th, 2025 01:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thisnewdaySo I was editing the previous entry about Tobias Wolff, Raymond Carver and Tess Gallagher and their time at Syracuse University.
In it, I had referenced "Moon Crossing Bridge," Gallagher's amazing volume of love poems and lamentations to her deceased husband Raymond Carver.
It had been a favorite of mine and I was pretty sure that, even in the confusion and emotional chaos of closing up the house on Mooney Avenue and moving here to the city's west side after my wife's passing, I had still managed to keep a paperback copy in one of my bookcases.
Anyway, I was fact-checking something about Gallagher's book online and happened to notice several ads for copies on sale, including a hardbound volume for $100. And I remember thinking that, even though I love the book, I'd never spend a hundred bucks just to own a hardbound copy.
But now I wanted to be sure that my "cheap" paperback copy was still in the house.
So I looked in the tall bookcase by my office door and, after navigating the haphazard filing system I use for my books, I discovered that I had, in fact, not one but two copies!
Not only that, but of them one was hardbound! Upon seeing it, I recalled finding it at a second-hand bookstore on James Street in the old Eastwood neighborhood where my wife and I had lived for over 30 years before she passed away.
I also remembered paying maybe $4-5 at the time and thinking it was a bargain because the book was in mint condition.
(As a side note, it still is. In mint condition.)
But the kicker was that on the cover was an oval-shaped, orange sticker which said "Autographed Copy!" And, sure enough, on the title page, was hastily scrawled, in black ink, "Tess Gallagher 4/30/92."
So maybe there's some magic left in The 'Cuse after all.
Maybe it resides in our memory of the lives that we've lived, in our hopes and dreams for the lives that we're living, or maybe it's sitting on a forgotten shelf/ of a tall bookcase/ just inside/ our office door...
LPK
Dreamwidth/LJ
1.20.2025
In it, I had referenced "Moon Crossing Bridge," Gallagher's amazing volume of love poems and lamentations to her deceased husband Raymond Carver.
It had been a favorite of mine and I was pretty sure that, even in the confusion and emotional chaos of closing up the house on Mooney Avenue and moving here to the city's west side after my wife's passing, I had still managed to keep a paperback copy in one of my bookcases.
Anyway, I was fact-checking something about Gallagher's book online and happened to notice several ads for copies on sale, including a hardbound volume for $100. And I remember thinking that, even though I love the book, I'd never spend a hundred bucks just to own a hardbound copy.
But now I wanted to be sure that my "cheap" paperback copy was still in the house.
So I looked in the tall bookcase by my office door and, after navigating the haphazard filing system I use for my books, I discovered that I had, in fact, not one but two copies!
Not only that, but of them one was hardbound! Upon seeing it, I recalled finding it at a second-hand bookstore on James Street in the old Eastwood neighborhood where my wife and I had lived for over 30 years before she passed away.
I also remembered paying maybe $4-5 at the time and thinking it was a bargain because the book was in mint condition.
(As a side note, it still is. In mint condition.)
But the kicker was that on the cover was an oval-shaped, orange sticker which said "Autographed Copy!" And, sure enough, on the title page, was hastily scrawled, in black ink, "Tess Gallagher 4/30/92."
So maybe there's some magic left in The 'Cuse after all.
Maybe it resides in our memory of the lives that we've lived, in our hopes and dreams for the lives that we're living, or maybe it's sitting on a forgotten shelf/ of a tall bookcase/ just inside/ our office door...
LPK
Dreamwidth/LJ
1.20.2025
