The Power of Finding What You Need, Not What You Want.

Walk the Aisles

Sometimes you have to look for one thing to find the thing.

I went to the bookstore recently looking for the latest collection of short stories by The Best American Short Stories. I specifically looked for the 2019 edition and I couldn’t find it. 

A woman nearby, who worked at the bookstore must have read the two marks above my eyes that appear like forward and back slashes across my forehead when I’m puzzled. 

Before she could ask, I asked, "Could you point me to where the latest collection of The Best of Short Stories is filed?"

She was helping someone and assured me she’d return to where I was, and where I was, was where the short story collection could and should be able to be located.

While in Asia this winter, I decided that I would return to some of the loves I left at first. Sometimes that is hard to do, because to return means you have to acknowledge you’ve left something. Then, you have to forgive yourself for losing your way, or in hindsight, making a turn that might take a while for you to rediscover you way. 

So, here I was, around the smell of books not yet leafed through looking at spines with titles on them. I saw authors I loved, Morrison, O'Connor, Smith and smiled.  Seeing their names never gets old. 

Then I saw this thick spine and a name I didn’t recognize but a word that I did: short story, in red letters. Curious, my index finger leaned into its top and my thumb held on to its front and pulled it out. There, the front looked at me, The ART of the Short Story. 

I have loved short stories since one of the first ones that I read that I can remember, William Faulkner’s, “A Rose for Emily.” I didn’t know then, a freshman in college, that it was possible to love the employment of language for the singular intention of a mood. Short stories do that, are that, and my first did it for me. 

I don’t think I would have ever known to look for this tome.  

There is nothing that I knew in that bookstore that could have told me to walk the aisles looking for the book with 52 authors, each sharing one of their short stories -ones considered to be a master of the form, within the history of fiction - along with a short analysis of the story embodies the art.

For a lady coming off an international trip, where one thing she rediscovered was the art of the short story in real life, I knew that my intention brought me to these aisles. I knew that what I thought I was looking for was necessary to bring me to the place I stood. I found that what I needed showed up, because I called for it. 

The woman returned and there I was in the aisle, with the book in my hand having forgotten I asked for her assistance. It turned out, the collection was sold out, the 2020 edition would be out later this year. By then, I no longer wanted the 2019 edition, I found something better, I found what I didn't know I came for.

We create our realities; if only we have the belief to will it, even for the small things, like a book.

Walk the aisles, what isn't there is waiting.