Ephemeral Stores of Memory

It was a bright Sunday afternoon with a bitterly cold wind sweeping the streets. Not many people about, not even in the lively university neighbourhood. The local second hand book store was open though, as always a comforting haven on cold & bored Sunday afternoons. 

Half of the shop window now was plastered over with the gaudy signs of spectacular price promotions “minus 20% on top of all discounts!”.  But no dopamine-shot of  potential gain for me,  only the sinking feeling of loss, because it also  read “ liquidation totale avant fermeture définitive”.  “Total” selling out! “Final” closing! No appeal possible against those adjectives.   

I’d always loved this book shop – it had the typical French university flavour of longwinded verbose humanities, but also sections that testified to the idiosyncrasies of its managers (or owners).  Such as a DVD section filled with classical ‘golden age’ Hollywood films - the man running the DVD section  boasted an absolute memory of all film titles & editions.  I myself was mostly drawn to the art history section, well stuffed with late antique & byzantine art books. Once I willingly let the manager convince me to acquire one of those door stopping art books ( this one about Christian art from Late Antiquity) weighing over 10 kilos (L:35,W: 20, H: 8 cm ), if only because it contained the close-up of a particularly dignified angel, from an obscure  mosaic high up on the wall of Santa Maria Maggiora in Rome (to which I once peered up in situ without however seeing anything).   

They also had an intriguing Middle East section with a merrily diverse offer of  books, covering  Pagan, Jewish, Christian  and Islamic thought, ancient & modern history, rationalist, religious and esoteric thinkers.   While browsing the Middle East shelves I overheard the student worker who manned the shop on Sundays, explaining to his friends that with the lease of the shop coming up for renewal,  the owners had had to face a steep increase in the rent .   He briskly summed up the shop’s financial situation “revenues down because of the likes of Amazon or Netflix etc – rent up -  so no way to turn a profit any longer. The owners have 2 more second hand book shops in Brussels, also nearing the end of their leases. So now they are re-thinking the entire concept.  They might go for ephemeral stores only”.  

Well in fact he said “magazins éphémères” –  endearingly lyrical French for “pop-up store” (I assume). The young man and his friends, all 20 somethings, did bemoan the unrelenting market pressures chasing out bookshops at the benefit of yet another café or restaurant  -- but they also sounded curiously upbeat.  Somehow excited about the change, welcoming perhaps the arrival of a new trendy, concept.

Meanwhile, squatting in front of the book-shelves, I had spotted an interesting book cover –  with a picture of antique arches  and capitals, bathing in golden sunlight and a title in pseudo old fashioned lettering  “Syrie - carrefour des civilisations”  (“Syria – crossroads of civilisations”).  A lavishly illustrated book : full of glossy pictures of glorious ancient buildings, undulating landscapes, cityscapes full of unsuspecting people leisurely going about their business (selling tea in the streets, lurking at water pipes, kneeling in mosquees and churches). At the back of the book I found the publishing date : October 2011.

When I handed my find at the young man at the counter, we  also chatted briefly about the closing of this shop. He tried to cheer me up:  “I’m sure they’ll open up some new venue in the neighbourhood”. He was routinely handling the transaction, but then stopped and started leafing pensively  through the book.  He looked up at me – “beautiful pictures. So much has been destroyed. My father is from the region.”  From his expression I gathered that he himself had never been there, only knew  ‘the region’ through pictures.  

 For a moment we gazed together at the sunlit glorious images –  muttering something about “human folly” and  morosely agreeing that “at least it’s all still there in books”.  But then he perked up and enthusiastically started telling about how scholars are painstakingly reconstructing all ancient buildings with 3D computer models. “They will rebuild everything!” he stated with all the endearing confidence of youth.

And that’s of course how humanity keeps carrying on despite all the catastrophes – with always new generations beginning anew, not yet dragged down by too much knowledge of ever recurring human folly. 

yesterday's street

Es bleibt uns vielleicht
irgend ein Baum an dem Abhang, daß wir ihn täglich
wiedersähen; es bleibt uns die Straße von gestern
und das verzogene Treusein einer Gewohnheit,
der es bei uns gefiel, und so blieb sie und ging nicht.(1)

 Perhaps what remains for us
is somewhere a tree on a slope, that we saw
each day;  yesterday's street remains for us
and the spoilt loyalty of  a habit
that liked us and so stayed, and didn't go away (2)

1. Die erste Duineser Elegie  http://www.rilke.de/
2. or the daily walk to work

vignettes of vanishing

“Press 2000”

It had been optimistically named like that in the early 90s : “Press 2000”.  A competing newspaper shop close by was called  “Euro Press”. Yes, those were the days that millennial & European enthusiasm was at its peak. And those were the days that people still smoked ‘en masse’,  and read papers & magazines. 

I used to be a regular customer at the “Press 2000” -  for cigarettes, The Economist and Vrij Nederland (its literary supplement!) – torn, as always, between left & right politics and between left & right brain parts. On Sundays the “press 2000” counter was manned by a young guy who looked like he’d landed there straight from some heavy duty nightclubbing. His off-beat humour and defiant attitude might have one worrying about his use of certain substances, but in any case never failed to  lighten up an otherwise dull Sunday.  

Since then I have moved to another neighbourhood, have quit smoking and the literary supplement of Vrij Nederland has turned into a faint ghost of what it once was. But last year, after an interval of maybe 15 years, I happened to drop in there again.  The shop was still called “Press 2000” and, lo and behold,  the young guy was there at the counter, still looking, well yes, young & trendy. He recognized me too, and we greeted each other as if we were long lost friends.

For days I felt happy at this unexpected continuity - not everything vanishes without leaving a trace!  

But then, this summer, riding by on the bus, I saw the place was boarded up, some left over magazines starting to yellow in the shop window. 

And today, when I cycled past, only gaping voids where left – a demolition company had taken over.

 

“Service, Quality  - Guaranteed!” 

The lady in the photoshop was a walking encyclopedia of photography know how. From analogue to digital, from automatic compact cameras to sophisticated reflex cameras – she knew every button and functionality. And she did her utmost to guide her clients to the single best camera suiting their needs. She was not going to be beaten by some stupid on-line camera buying wizard, oh no!  Service and Quality , that was how she was going to compete! 

 But fear did flash up in her eyes when the camera she had guided me to, was not in store and could only be delivered 10 days later. Would I perhaps be ready to make an advance deposit? Reluctantly she admitted that, yes, sometimes people did come in for a lengthy advice session, only to walk out the shop and buy on-line. I duly bought my camera there, picking it up 10 days later. When I entered, she was serving an elderly client, explaining enthusiastically some very advanced function of his camera.   While waiting, I took in with pleasure the many shelves that were crammed full with photography paraphernalia – from expensive lenses to humble rain covers, from protective bags to tripods, from printing paper to albums – everything a photographer might ever need. 

Except that our world’s recording frenzy is now catered to by smartphones – allowing a real time flooding of the web by millions (billions?) of images.
So, in August, there was a sign "Liquidation Totale” – "everything must be gone by September 30th" !


And yes, when I walked by today, everything was gone, systematically gone, vanished without a trace -   the shop window empty, the logos and publicity signs gone – only, high up there, the remains of a bleached poster promoting the printing of digital photos and faded letters promising Service - Quality – Guaranteed! 

 

a little guide to out-of-season seaside resorts (and the savouring thereof)

The first rule is to really make sure you’re in the off-season.  With hordes of idle pensioners roaming about the country, benign September or October days no longer qualify as out-of-season.  But a rough December day (before the X-mas holidays, mind you ) with 6 to 9 Beaufort will do nicely.

The  second rule is to come properly equipped : boots, coat, gloves, scarves for the outdoors and a choice selection  of  books for the indoors .    

 The third, most important, rule is to bring along  a minimum of melancholy imagination,  needed to imbue all those chilly empty boulevards and cafés with pathos and meaning.  

A  suitably melancholy disposition for off-season savouring can be developed either from nostalgia for happy childhood vacations past or from longings for romantic encounters or even from mid-life contemplativeness. 

 The combination of all three factors is a sure recipe for a memorable stay at a wind-swept, out-of-season seaside resort.     

Which definitely makes me eligible as the perfect out-of-season resort guest!  

While I’m not graced with childhood  memories of annual seaside vacations, I do fondly remember the annual family outing to the town of Spa. We always went to a creaky establishment near the woods, called “Annette & Lubin”, a certified Ardennes-resort of the Belgian National Railway Company (for which my grandfather worked all his life).  

Not sure though whether the off-season concept still applies to Spa.  Nowadays “wellness weekends” are all the rage,  catering to all-year-round overstressed middle class double income couples as the successors of the elegantly overwrought spa-going aristocrats of previous times.  Let it be clear that  “wellness weekends” are an altogether different category, having no place at all in a little guide to melancholy out-of-season resorts!

As to  longings for romantic encounters, I do have a long history of such longings and at an early age discovered the imaginative potential of the off-season seaside.  Many a daydreaming walk  have I taken along wintry boulevards. From many a glass of wine have I sipped, looking up from a book and staring out of the window to people struggling with their umbrellas in an autumn storm.  Romantic encounters did take place, but (come to think of it), never at resorts and never with any person I had imagined.  When at last I did find love (out-of-season, but not at the seaside), it turned out to have nothing to do with any of my a-priori longings.  

Now what about mid life contemplativeness,  as final savouring factor for the off-season connoisseur? No need for the mid-life. Contemplativeness alone will do... and that I  have been graced (or cursed) with all my life.