I wonder

I wonder what tomorrow will bring? We first met in 1972 in San Francisco, and he was one of my bosses, and I was young and naive. I thought he was a little pompous and did not pay all that much attention to Ron. I knew that Mr. Howell, or Warren, was the one to be on the right side of. And, he was much more fun. He talked to me, he did educate me about rare books, he flirted with me, as he did with all his young women. In his own version of sexism he was at the same time oblivious to gender -he treated us all with respect to our learning and our ability to grasp “rare books” and to love the concept as he did. 

Back to Ron. We became friends, he was shy and came out of it a bit. We did have some social interaction but became real friends much later, after I had left John Howell-Books as he  had. For some reason we kept in touch and sent cards and such. Then I began to visit Santa Barbara, and to help out at the book fairs in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Ron kept asking me to quit what I was doing and come and work with him in Santa Barbara, and one day I phoned him and said: “Did you mean it?” So I moved to Santa Barbara and we had a good run of 21 years working together. 

But now my friend is gone -lost in the memories, lost to old age, lost in the fogs of denial of reality, simply lost. Instead there exists a sad old man, a man in total denial of the world he has created for himself. A man who made decisions that were not good ones, not considered ones, but mostly made out of fear. Fear of being close, fear of intimacy, fear of loss, fear of any risk. 

My friend is gone and I will try to persuade the old confused man that he has to leave his home of the past 35 years because he has run out of money and is not capable of safely look after himself.

Which is kinder, leave him there and let what happens happen or remove him to a safe place filled with love and care but one he will hate?

I miss my friend who I could talk to for hours about books and their ideas, their place in our society and evolution of that society, their intrinsic value as an artifact as well as repository for the spreading of ideas, their incredible influence on society, of authors who created them and how they found their ideas and how they had to write their conscience. Of whether Hemingway or Faulkner had a better style, of the value of Jack London’s writings, of how the great of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries endured for the love of their ideas. Of the characters in the stories, of the good plots, the stupid plots, the simple ones, the complex ones,and always why the Why.

I miss him.