Lost and Not Quite Found

When it was time to renew the University library card, I let it lapse.

Did you gasp?

I had to let go - it was a candy store so tempting, I hurt my neck.

Sometimes you must live within limits, satisfying cravings, in small doses.

Addictions can be sated in other ways -- attending book sales at surrounding country libraries provides one such fix.

I drove to a sale last Saturday in Ladysmith Village. Although there weren't any desirable books, as is often the case at the more rural locations, there were a few appealing VHS tapes: St. Maybe, once a fond seminary reading assignment, and Pinocchio.

The Village, not the event, made the more lasting impression. Turning through the gates, you encounter a community, the antithesis of the Route 1, you just left. Tidy homes cluster around a rectangular park. A cozy library nestles at the end of a tree-lined central avenue comprised of brick town homes. It's out of place in the nicest of ways.

IFC's been looping Waiting for Guffman this month. Wikipedia calls the movie a 'loving parody.' I don't think so. While other Christopher Guest films deflate heavy metal, dog shows and folk music, all already crying out to be lampooned, small towns like Guest's fictional Blaine don't necessarily deserve the same treatment.

We've been exploring this subject for weeks now discussing small town depictions ranging from the grotesque, like Anderson, Faulkner and O'Connor's, to the Sinclair Lewis more relatable treatment of formidable Main Street cliques. No one paints a finer American neighborhood mural than Anne Tyler, as she does in the highly recommended St. Maybe cited above, nor does anymore capture contemporary English mores better than John Mortimer.

-- yet this week, despite intentions to the contrary, the trail ended at Mailer's noxious Castle in the Forest, where, as if C.S. Lewis' Screwtape demon, instead of politely pursuing average suburban pew sitters, like us, schemes to possess the biggest prize of all: Adolph Hitler.

Whether it's a charming Southern village, or the Austrian hinterland, you and I may end up anywhere, as long as we keep trying on identities.

Until we find one that fits, we'll flail, desperately, at times; or, at others, deliberately proceed, as if we were ever arriving at a series of stations, rooting out the idealized totality of all our desirable mutual cultural references, whether a town of post-Scroogian conversions, Waitist diners, a Scrubtion hospital, or a miracle on every 34th street.

Often, lost in the stacks, I can't decide where to go.

You know it's time to travel on but you're caught in-between.

If you ride too many trains, at once, you may suffer an injury, as I did, at the University library.

Better to take it slow, one stop at a time, not missing opportunities, which otherwise, overwhelming, are missed.