MOOP!

There is a magic in used bookstores, one that is not as easily found anywhere else. It can be the tiniest little shithole with the worst selection of romance novels and computer manuals from the early 1990s, but it will still be a place I want to wander and sit and look at the titles and just breathe, quietly, between the stacks.

The components combine to make the whole more than the parts. You have books (actual physical books, because for all that the part that matters is the words inside, and those can be made in so many new ways) combined with things that have already been owned, (and touched, and maybe used and loved by someone else), combined with a claustrophillic winding room, with aisles too close together and too tall. Sometimes you get an older person working the counter, who knows where everything is without looking it up. Sometimes you get cartoons pinned to the bookshelves, or postcards, or lists. Once, I was in a used bookshop that offered discounts, ten percent off for every foot of books you purchased.

Sometimes there are cats.

The used bookstore I was in today was a combination English and Japanese shop, with almost no non-fiction. Opposite the sff shelves were rows of little Japanese paperbacks (just proving that I can feel magic-safe-right inside a bookstore even if I don't speak the language, and that was a valuable thing to know). Poking around, I found a tiny back closet, barely wide enough for me to walk into and maybe only three feet long. It was probably storage, full of extra manga and Harlequins, but it was tight and dark and cool and I could breathe out everything that is hard about the world.

There is magic in used bookstores and magic in used books. I am glad.

So! You may have seen mention that I am in California, and you may have even heard me mention, offhand, that I am out here to visit my clone. If you have not been following this journal for a particularly long time, you may not realize I have a clone. This is a shame, as they are one of my favourite people in the world (obviously).

Our clone-dom originally came about superficially. We met over a decade ago through the INTERNET, and decided that we were clearly clones of each other due to a handful of Wacky Coincidences in our fannish and otherwise tendencies. This was ultimately a good decision.

Having a clone means that I know I will always have at least one person in the world who is not going to judge me for my bullshit. Or rather, he will totally judge me for my bullshit, and probably laugh at it, but will still be there when it's through. It means I will always have at least one person in the world who is willing to give me a hug despite their own desires¹, just because that's what I need. It means I have someone who I can share the brainweasels with, and the neuro-atypical stuff, and the weird wounded matter-of-fact hurts, without having to spend endless time explaining the background because he just gets me.

It means that one of my Truths (this is my theme this month, the idea of things that are True, apparently) is that I have someone on my side who is out there and loves me like fire and truth and the end of the world.

The nature of being a clone (of being a dual-clone, because in my future I will go back in time to clone myself to be him, and in his, back to clone me) is that I am not alone.

I mean, naturally in the day-to-day it's quite easy to be alone. I am fucked up and sometimes I disappear, for minutes-hours-days-weeks² and am alone. But I know he's out there and waiting for me to get my head back together. If I complain to him, he will give me space to be vanished, or help to get back in. I am not alone in fighting my demons.

That's a good and valuable thing. And that's why it's so unbelievably great that I have a clone, since for all the help I need and get from other people, I am always capable of getting it here too, from him.

I don't get out here often enough to visit, which is no good. California is the vacation that feels like a vacation, like lounging and reading good books and playing video games (zommmmmbieees). But it's also the space that feels like creativity, because the two of us make each other laugh damn near constant, and we write stories together, sharing characters and plots.

This entry is meandery. mek is rad. There we go.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Not that my desires would want hugs if he didn't wanna deliver them, but that's a separate thing.

2: And last year I disappeared for about five months, from October 2013 well into the Spring. I am keenly aware that happened, and desperate to ever keep it from reoccurring. Some days I am more successful than others.