I stepped into an artsy one-up real live brain-feeding Bookstore on 10^th Ave yesterday, because the cover of a Malevich coffee table book leaped from the window and made me go in the door, like this

and it was one of those magical bookstores. Books sprouting from the shelves and tables as if I am wearing special glasses for them, books that speak directly to lines of thinking and current projects, covers that glow like the acutely bent light inside minerals, and oblique openings to daylight from inside caves, there’ll be a lovely word, when the sunlight makes it into a cave.

I was surprised as hell to see the Dick line of thinking, that’s the pkdick line of thinking that speaks into the writing through my typos, and please don’t ever mistake, don’t let the fact of his ethereal, imaginary presence, or even my typing the letters of his name imply any sort of knowledge about, smarts about, or even really interest beyond the usual in (see i don’t even really know how many l’s in philip) it’s just that he came to me and I go with everything that comes to me, that persists, if it’s in my reach, I use it, and thanks to the typo device, pkdick persists. He landed here, the writerly, thinkerly energy found this writing non-writer close enough to home (what a blooming compliment) or maybe I glommed onto him, chicken and egg style, when the thing I can’t quit reflecting my reality off of happened to me.

The girl at the counter asked because my eyeballs had fallen out of their sockets and were rolling around, threatening to fall off the wooden checkout counter after having viewed a certain book I won’t mention mostly for not remembering exactly the title, but evidently I’m not the only writer whose mind has been commandeered by Dick, it makes me wonder, what does he want with me? what is it? here I give myself over to edgar cayce, but comes to me instead philip k dick and his complete lack of ability to spell anything. i was putting my eyeballs back into their sockets, toggling them this way and that until they clicked, trying to play down the fact of their falling, and wishing I hadn’t muttered anything Golom style to the bookstore lady who was separately causing another flare-up of bookstore magic by mentioning Mary Shelley, not Frankenstein, but Mary Shelley, and I was like, NO Muse, blasted carnival gods, you can’t ADD to what’s in my mind, you can’t keep docking more and more ships in the harbor.

So i had the books shipped to me, i got away with a purchase of 5 – two amazing Malevich books, the second one fell open on the print of one of the only two pencil drawings of Malevich’s I’ve even seen with my own eyes. The first book drew me into the store, the second one flashed me the pencil drawing, the third one is a show catalog that fills a gap in shows I’ve missed, the fourth is this unmentionable pkdick book. Is there a 5^th? I could check the receipt but if there is I’m probably not remembering it for safety reasons, and if there isn’t, then even so. We are not arriving, we are getting to, always.