A Most Unreliable Narrator Issue #137.5 It's me.

Hi.

Feb 08, 2023

Welcome to A Most Unreliable Narrator, the slice of life newsletter of GenXer around town, Lisa Rabey. I talk about anything and everything with a bit of swears. I’m glad you’re here.

Dear Internet,

(Thanks for humouring me on the mid-week issue.)

Chuck Klosterman Maybe Wrong

I finished Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs on Sunday and the stupid eBook had chapters of a few of Klosterman’s other books which lead me to a spree on Amazon, after cross-referencing my libraries of course, on buying uh, several more, (uh more than several), books by him. All used, with one eBook I got cheaply. I spent about $5 a books (including shipping) on the books and I’ve cleared out space in my now nearly empty bookcase. J asked me about this (uh, Lisa, why are you buying books if you’re getting rid of them?) and my answer is: I’ll read them and then sell them back or donate them. LET THEM GO FREE!

Annnddd, if anyone looked at my Amazon cart, they would see this slew of books by the same person, tissue paper, and Vaseline lip balm and wonder if I was up to something not that great. I’m perfectly fine, thank you.

Now you may wonder why I am buying books when my current goal is to sell/donate what I have. It seems antithetical to my current stance. True, I get that, but my argument is, well, I have none. I am playing catch-up on his work, and I want to read it. Nothing wrong with that.

It’s all fine.

(Sweet irony is I know I have several of his books up at the cabin still spine uncracked and pages crispy white. I’ll just sell/donate those too.)

One thing I have pulled from his work, other than he’s wrong a lot of the time, is one of the chapters at the end of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, was for Klosterman’s fictional novel, Downtown Owl. Owl is a fake town in anywhere North Dakota. Klosterman writing what he knows (he’s from North Dakota). This cements the proof that fake areas for books supersedes realness nearly every time.

The Great Bookening

The great bookening continues.

We took three large Trader Joe’s reusable bags, all filled to the brim with books, to Half-Price books a few Saturdays ago. I made $51.23 which worked out to about $1 a book. When I worked at a bookstore that sold used books, we sold the book for ½ of the retail price and bought back at ¼ of the retail price (depending on condition). Sure, I was a bit disappointed to get so little from Half-Price Books for books that were like new with crispy pages and uncracked spines but my commitment to minimalism as books are concerned wore out.

(We took another load this past Saturday. Four bags of books, three were sold, and I made $66. We turned around and went to a new to us BBQ place which the bill came to $65. Kismet.)

(The un-sold bag of books will be donated to Goodwill. Maybe someone needs a five-year-old book of CSS tips and tricks. Godspeed my paper friend!)

I asked how they determined what price to offer the seller and the lady gave this long winded of, “Oh, we cross-reference sales across our stores and national averages. We also take into consideration the value of the book and its condition. Blah blah blah.” I watched her co-worker just scan books into the computer. Now that may be how they reference everything, but the lady gave the impression she had tied her long hair up and held it with a #2 pencil, pushed her metaphorical glasses up her nose, and spend all this time researching a $15 dollar, retail, paperback. Please.

I have bookshelf #4 to go through with each shelf just jammed with books with the top shelf precariously pile of titles. Bookshelves #1, #2, and #3 have books that I kept but they are sparse. It looks like someone is just starting a collection which is not the reality.

I’m up to two bags of books to sell and I’m taking a breather. I’ve got stuff to sell on eBay and I would like to concentrate on that. My capitalistic world is never ending.

Losing my religion

Bookshelf #3 contains majority of my spiritual books.

My first discovery: I own four sets of tarot cards and an oracle deck.

The spiritual books rage from paganism, self-help, wicca, and Northern Traditions (I had a few dupes on the paganism side of things). When I say, “Northern Traditions,” I’m talking about the worship of Nordic gods and related associates. When I came across those books (which sold fyi at Half-Price Books), I didn’t even bother to catalog them. Rather, I just put them gently into the make-shift book bag.

(If I really want to know which books I had, I can just check my Amazon orders.)

Now why did I treat these books differently? Honestly, I didn’t want to be associated with those damned books. I hung out on a few subreddits that were honest to god about the teachings and worship of Northern Traditions until they became infiltrated by white supremists both American and other. One subreddit was closed due these proclivities and I left the others. I was, and still am, afraid to work on those traditions because I did not want to associate myself or be associated with white supremists. I know, I know, seems silly since this is a personal thing but if the gods exist, they may be understanding and not all Northern Traditionists are evil.

Now, most people I know, and most people you know, have a belief in something. I think it would be untenable to assume our associates do have the same belief systems as we do. This is not discounting worship groups of all varieties, rather, I’m talking about your day-to-day friends and acquaintances.

There is something peaceful about believing in a higher power. Something I have never thought attainable even though I’ve been desperate to believe since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. My aunt Carol (R.I.P.) told me at mother’s funeral, as we chain smoked outside of a local restaurant whose name I am forgetting, that I came to her at the age of 8 to ask if there was a God.

Neither of us remember her answer.

I don’t remember asking her that question but I do know that would be something I would do. I grew up Catholic (I still love the pomp and circumstance of the religion and Pope Francis seems pretty liberal considering), went to Catholic school and even a Catholic college. (Now for the latter, I went because it was small and had a good reputation. Not because it was Catholic per se.) So, I know the drill.

And I remember, in one boring mass, when I was a pre-teen, thinking, “How can they find so much to talk about every week? The bible is only so long, and it’s been two thousand years!” The concept of nuance and difference never went into my little head. It just seemed silly to preach. How have we, the population, not gotten to the point we already knew these stories?

Back to belief systems.

When the opportunity to stop going to church came up, I took it wholeheartedly. Part of it had to do with mother straying from the church as her mental illness started to take hold and it became less important. Her disillusionment, however, started when she had my brother, out of wedlock and doing so in 1979 America was a massive sin, to be told by the priest, who was an alcoholic by the way, my brother didn’t exist. How could a person, who preaches every week that children come by the grace of god, that someone who was hours old didn’t exist or was evil?

(Jeff was baptized in the Episcopalian faith (Catholic light) and then had his communion at the local Catholic church when he was seven or eight. So, mother basically lied to make sure her son got into heaven. Do with this information as you will.)

Yes, my relationship with Catholicism is sketchy. I remember when I went to Rome in 2005, my best friend at the time, who is pagan, and I expected to be zapped out of existence when we stepped in the arms of St Peters and if not, totally when we would enter the basilica. I was at the Vatican for the art and she went for the socio-cultural lens. To our genuine surprise, nothing happened to us.

I crave a community and a spiritual belief system seems like a good idea.

This is not to say I don’t have a community already, I do. J, Best Kate, Kristin, Brendan, Lyndsey, and Steph are all close to my heart. I have loads of close friends who are the second tier and then we go down to people I’ve just met and people I have yet to meet.

But yet, yet, something is missing. I need something to tie me together.

Hence the spiritual books.

I’ve been to a local UU service but I was too nervous and awkward to fully enjoy it. (I did not attend a Covenant of Unitarian Universalists Pagan (CUUPS) group but I probably should but that would require that I leave the house which I am slowly doing.)

(Aside: J and I are desperate to leave Louisville but current interest rates makes it difficult to buy a condo in the city of our choice (Chicago) while carrying mortgages on two existing properties. J also does not want to buy and wait for the Louisville condo to sell; rather he wants to sell and then buy in Chicago. Plus, we may live at the cabin for a year or two. With that knowledge, I’m starting my path, yet fucking again, on being social and making friends here. I almost hate it.)

I’ve stopped and started this conversation with you so I decided to write about this more later. I put the UU and CUUP meetings in my calendar which will prompt me to go. If it’s not in my calendar, it doesn’t happen.

The UU services are on Zoom in addition to in-person so I may give those a whirl. I reached out to the CUUP coordinator and I may pop in their next meeting.

A Most Unreliable Narrator

A Most Unreliable Narrator Issue #137.5 It's me.

Hi.

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