Discovery of the Artifact

Depending upon after work errands, I have a series of routes I will drive to get to those destinations. Along Willow Ave, an east-west Long Beach thoroughfare, I noticed one afternoon book carts outside what looked like a hair and nail salon. Books! my brain, having assumed the salon status of the business front among the street's density of establishments at that spot just east of Magnolia, was dealing with confusion as traffic flowed easily by.

Instead of a picture in the establishment's window of braided hair or someone getting their brows threaded, there was a white sign with five red all capital letters: BOOKS.

The next time I was running that particular errand, I saw the carts on the approach again, but this time I tried to locate the name of the place. It was tougher than it needed to be.

It should be here mentioned that when encountering a newly discovered independent bookstore, I turn into a regular consumerist American. I don't really shop under normal circumstances, unless I'm in the warm confines of a used bookstore. Then I'll stroll around and find something, anything to spend some money on and do my part to keep a place open.

Only on these days, trying to scope this one particular place, my time was severely limited. I realized I would need to plan my time around the visit.

First was a quick Google Maps look to see what bookstore this was. Easy enough in today's day. The name turned out to be Castle of Books. Wait...that was the name of a place I was interested in checking out years ago, only it was far up Atlantic Blvd. Seems like the location has changed over the years.

Finally the day was here. I made a quick right turn into the neighborhood and parked on a residential street. I made it into the cramped space and was surrounded by stalagmites of books to the far reaches of the indoor sky. The organization left some to be desired, and after a minute or so I asked if they had any Hunter Thompson. My last copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was loaned out a while back and I'm not sure its coming back.

The gentleman running the store looked puzzled and suggested I check the mystery stack around the corner.

Mysteries? I lost confidence in the guy at that moment. Whatever. I started to look all over, looking for Pynchon, Murakami, Flanagan, HST, DFW...the names I usually look for. On the spine of a sixties era pocketbook sized book was the title The Poem of Hashish. That caught my attention. I pulled it out. It was written by Charles Baudelaire, a French name I recognized, if otherwise knowing nothing about him.

The collection had another piece by a contemporary of Baudelaire, Theophile Gautier, named "The Hashish Club", as well as an introduction by John Githens, the translator for the Gautier piece.

It started with the introduction, then the piece by Gautier, and then the titular piece by Baudelaire, "The Poem of Hashish." Why, I imagined, with the emphasis on Githens and Gautier, was Baudelaire's name so prominent?

I thumbed through it and noticed that Baudelaire did not, in fact, write a poem, instead it was an essay.

A quick view of the blurb on the reverse shed a little light on the context: the French occupation of Algeria brought much of the North African cultural phenomena to the heart of France, and one was dawamesk, an edible made primarily with hash. In 1845, groups of intellectuals were invited to a dark and decrepit mansion in a forgotten corner of Paris to sample the goods. After a series of rotations, different pieces were created by different writers and painters about their experiences.

That was enough for me. I found what I was going to purchase. The handwritten price of $3.99 would be easily covered by the five spot in my pocket. On the way out, I marveled at the design of the printing on the receipt, matching the marking of the location's logo, seen on their discount punch card:

A castle on the receipt? Cool!

I didn't know yet just what I held in my hands. It would take a little research to bright light to this tiny book.