It was an awful moment that will stay with me forever. I almost lost her in a gust of wind.

Mrs. Wife was away for the weekend. She took a well-deserved trip down to the shore with some friends. They had spa treatments and slept in ‘til ungodly hours of the morning. 8:00. 8:30. Such decadence.

That left me alone with The Daughters and a raging nor’easter heading up the coast. My plans to take them for a walk in the woods or to the boardwalk were dust. I hate to say this because it shows a complete lack of imagination, but I threw them in the car and, with the wind starting to howl and rain falling in sheets, headed to the mall.

Out trip didn’t last. We got there as the storm intensified and after about an hour, the power went out in the entire complex. The storm grew much bigger than anyone had anticipated. Entire city grids were blown out. We watched the indoor carousel as it slowed to a halt. I made light of the events but as we walked through a darkened Nordstroms, I got the sense that we might be in serious danger. We were quite a ways from home.

We reached the exit out to the parking lot. The weather was fierce. The wind was howling and I’ve never seen rain fall in such quantities or with such force. I put their hoods up and tied them. I picked up 3-Year Old, held her under my umbrella and told her to put her arms around my neck. I put my other arm around 8-Year Old. I told her to stay with me and to not run ahead through the parking lot because people couldn’t see three feet in front of them. We slowly made our way towards the car.

We reached the car. I opened the back door and 8-Year Old got in. While she was climbing in, I started to open the driver’s door, still holding 3-Year Old and my umbrella. And then it hit us. A powerful, blast of wind that came up from hell. I’ve never felt anything like it. It caught the driver’s door and flung it open. I thought it would be ripped off its hinges.

My umbrella was yanked out of my hand and shot straight up into the air. The clasp cut my finger. 3-Year Old’s hood flew off and the wind and rain caught her square in the face. Her head snapped back and her hair was flying perpendicular to the ground. Her face was in a horrible grimace. We were both instantly soaked to the skin. In a panic, she started kicking me and was slipping down out of my arms. In one unbroken motion, I jammed her into the front passenger seat, dove into the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut behind us. The interior of the car was drenched. The whole thing lasted less than 10 seconds but I will never, ever forget the look of abject horror on her little, 3-year old face.

The drive home was murder. The entire packed mall was emptying out all at once. Because the electricity grids had been knocked out, there were no traffic lights and no police had arrived to direct cars. It was pandemonium. While waiting in the long crawl to the exit, I could feel the wind buffeting and rocking the car. We sang Christmas carols. My hands started hurting and I suddenly realized that I was strangling the steering wheel.

I spent today cleaning the detritus of the storm out of my back yard. I’ve never lived through a storm season like this one. We were pounded with one blizzard after another. And now, this. It was reported that some wind gusts yesterday reached 75 mph.

There’s a lot of this:

I also stumbled across this:

You follow desire, and you are not satisfied.
Again you follow desire, and again you are not satisfied.
Again you try, and again you are not satisfied.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche

por·nog·ra·phy (pôr-nŏg’rə-fē) n.
1. Explicit pictures, writing, or other material whose primary purpose is to cause arousal.

If that’s the dictionary definition of pornography, then the Pacific Book Auction catalog for the Fine Books auction to be held on March 18th in San Francisco qualifies as porn for me because, baby, I’m aroused.

Long-time readers and family know that I chase after rare books. I have a theory that I started this hobby as a sop to my low self esteem. I spent my early years defining myself as someone without a college degree. I felt pretty bad about it. Don’t laugh. Pretty Manhattan girls and potential employers like to see a fat degree on your CV. If you haven’t got one, it’s hard to get hired. Or kissed.

I thought that collecting rare books would be seen as an intellectual pursuit, but a funny thing happened along the way. I actually fell in love with it. What a happy accident!

There are a few important pieces in the upcoming auction that are well out of my range of affordability, but they’re worth mentioning. For instance, this is a first edition of Galileo’s groundbreaking work from 1613 whereby he advocated the idea that the planets orbit the sun, which earned him a censure from the dolts in the Vatican. It almost cost him his life. You have to understand; this book NEVER comes up for auction. Auction estimate: $20,000-$30,000.

This rather ordinary looking piece of paper is a leaf (page) from a Gutenberg Bible (c. 1450-1455). It’s not a stretch to say this page came from a book that altered the course of civilization. The Gutenberg Bibles were the first books printed on a movable type letterpress. Prior to these, it was all quills, parchment and sexually frustrated monks locked in towers.

There aren’t many Gutenberg Bibles left because as the centuries passed, people discovered that you could make a hell of a lot more money by disassembling them and selling the individual pages than you could by selling the whole book. If you ever come to New York, there’s a Gutenberg Bible on permanent display in the Morgan Library and also in the big New York Public Library on 42nd and Madison. For this single leaf, the auction estimate is $40,000-$50,000.

Here’s a first edition of Catcher in the Rye with its iconic dust jacket designed by E. Michael Mitchel. The illustration features the Central Park carousel. (The same carousel that’s still up and running today.) The whole thing is beautiful. The design. The color scheme. The fonts. It makes me woozy when I see one in person at a rare book fair. And it’s a pretty good read, too. Auction estimate: $6,000-$9,000.

WTF happened to me? I’ve said this before but it bears repeating; I use to drive drunk, smoke as much weed as I could get my hands on, have unprotected sex and dabble in narcotics. Now, I chase rare books. As Ray Davies would say, where have all the good times gone?

As the years peel away, your tastes change. Authors, musicians, artists, etc. fall in and out of favor. But there’s always that one defining body of work that stays with you. That helped shape you and continues to provide nourishment.

When I was 22 and in the Coast Guard, my brother gave me a book by Charles Bukowski. Bukowski is not a great writer. His output isn’t very literary. You won’t find him being taught in the universities. But all of these decades later, his stuff still speaks to me on a very visceral level. I actually got a chill when I read these again. As though I was reading them for the first time. Talk about the gift that keeps on giving!

Here are a few samples from that book my brother gave me, Mockingbird Wish Me Luck, when Bukowski was, in my opinion, at the peak of his powers.

style

style is the answer to everything —
a fresh way to approach a dull or a
dangerous thing.
to do a dull thing with style
is preferable to doing a dangerous thing
without it.

Joan of Arch had style
John the Baptist
Christ
Socrates
Caesar,
Garcia Lorca.

style is the difference,
a way of doing
a way of being done.

6 herons standing quietly in a pool of water
or you walking out the bathroom naked
without seeing
me.

and the moon and the stars
and the world:

long walks at
night —
that’s what’s good
for the
soul:
peeking into windows
watching tired
housewives
trying to fight
off
their beer-maddened
husbands.

Bukowski wrote this one for his daughter when she was about 8. Same age as my daughter, who’s upstairs sleeping as I type these words.

marina:

majestic, magic
infinite
my little girl is
sun
on the carpet —
out the door
picking a
flower, ha!,
an old man,
battle-wrecked,
emerges from his
chair
and she looks at me
but only sees
love,
ha!, and I become
quick with the world
and love right back
just like I was meant
to do.