Finding my way to 18 Miles of Books

I had the occasion to walk from the river framing Wall Street up, through the East Village, along Broadway.  It was a cold day, but the sun was shining, and I fell in thick with a happy feeling.  I had unwittingly dropped one of several things that I'd stuffed inside my coat pocket; a man ran it back to me with grace.  I sat alone in a restaurant grading student papers; the waiter was efficient and most kind.  I was on my way to meet someone with whom I've had a most cherished correspondence and was at last nearing her building when I saw the Strand Bookstore across the street, at a diagonal.  The Strand Bookstore? I ridiculously asked myself, jogging at once toward the red canopy and the fabled bins of one dollar books. 

Opening the door, I was at once engulfed by heavy-coated, floppy-hatted people swarming about tables of books, between the aisles of books, among the dolls and magnets and puppetry inspired by the fantastical or real of books.  I was having a bit of a hard time processing it all—I'd only merely happened upon it—and so I climbed the stairs to a mid-point landing to look out upon the vastness.  I was snapping this photograph when a young man came and stood beside me—two passengers, we were, on the book balcony of a ship. 

"And it goes on," he said, "and on, doesn't it?"

"It absolutely does," I said.

And may it always.