Loading Mercury With A Pitchfork

So I have this Richard Brautigan THING. I've read all his books. Every. Last. One. Poetry, prose, the works. About a year ago, I hit a wall in finishing them all because a lot of them are out of print. Then I searched the MSU library and a tiny peephole showed itself to me. A small, inconsequential chink in the armor of frustration.

I went down to MSU and did a search for the books. They were on the fourth floor west. It's a big library. There are wings and everything. The community college library is no slacker, but it's no MSU.

I found myself in the scary, dimly lit service elevator on the way up to the fourth floor. When I entered, it was the year 2000. When I exited, it was 1967.

There were no computers on fourth floor west. No ethernet cables. No brightly colored wires to remind me of the progression of time and technology. Only the smell of books and old.

I walked through the shelves for a while, just touching the books and feeling. I felt like I belonged there. I really did. I'd been removed from my time for a reason, and that reason was to find my way back to Brautigan.

I located his section and several of his novels and books of poetry that I hadn't read glowed out at me from their shelf Holy Grail style. I grabbed all the ones I hadn't read and went to sit down at one of those study cubes they always have in libraries.

I was alone. And I opened up "Loading Mercury With A Pitchfork". 1976. Out of print. The first poem is this:

Postcard

I wonder if eighty-four-year-old Colonel Sanders
ever gets tired of travelling all around America
   talking about fried chicken.

And there's this:

Fuck Me Like Fried Potatoes

Fuck me like fried potatoes
on the most beautifully hungry
morning of my God-damn life.

And this:

Finding Is Losing Something Else

Finding is losing something else.
I think about, perhaps even mourn,
       what I lost to find this.

But in the front, there was a poem written in pencil by Max. It was dated 1984. I don't know who Max is. I don't know where he ended up. But in 1984, he loved Richard Brautigan enough to write his own poem in the front of the book.

He would be about 40 now. He's probably forgotten Richard Brautigan, or abandoned him to pursue his adult life. He's never told his children about him. And he's never confessed to his wife that he vandalized a book at Michigan State during his tenure there.

Or maybe, just maybe, Max is a famous poet. Writing under a pen name in Madagascar somewhere. He is their most famous national poet and when they ask him, why are you here?, he replies, "Because there was a time, in 1984, when I found a book."

I was still alone. I really wanted to smoke a cigarette. I had the feeling that a lot of cigarettes had been smoked at that study cube and I didn't want to interrupt history. It seemed the perfect time.

But in the year 2000, you can't smoke in libraries. So I had to leave. Because as far as 1967 had jutted out into my life, I just couldn't stay there. I didn't belong.

Thank you, Max, you Madagascaran rogue, you. A year ago, you gave me something small but valuable. A year later, I remember. Thanks.