Who has two thumbs and is constitutionally incapable of going on vacation without purchasing a book or two? This girl!
I stumbled on Ivallan’s Secondhand and Exceptional Books on a quest to patronize the legendary Bei Slawinchen on a recommendation from a coworker. Bei Slawinchen didn’t happen, whether because it was closed for renovations or because I wasn’t cool enough to be let in (maybe both), but the trip out to Neukölln was worth it for Ivallan’s. Did I spend three hours browsing? Yes! Did the staff at any time pressure me to pay up and get out of the tiny space? No! Did they in fact help me locate an upcoming book club read? Yes! (I didn’t end up buying it, but paging through a couple chapters was enough for me to decide that it wouldn’t be for me.) I wandered around with various books in hand, waiting for my excruciatingly slow data connection to load library websites and my Storygraph TBR so I could check my spontaneous interests against books I was already planning to read or that I could borrow for free.
In the end I walked out with a novelty cross-stitch (“AWKWARD” in silver thread on green background), a bookmark I think I’ve already lost, and two slim volumes, one of which was the new Penguin Classics edition of Letters to a Young Poet, in a relatively new translation from German by Charlie Louth from 2011. Their collective weight was probably less than, or at most equivalent to, the copy of Wind, Sand and Stars that I had resigned myself to depositing at my hostel. Therefore, totally legitimate purchase: no net gain or loss.
On my last day in Berlin, I ended up sitting in a strandkorb at Tempelhof with some snacks and reading most of the book there, pausing occasionally to watch a family playing basketball. Contemplative. Idyllic.
A hundred years later, a lot has changed, but Rilke’s advice right from the third paragraph is still on point and perhaps the best advice any writer could get:
Go into yourself. Examine the reason that bids you to write; check whether it reaches its roots into the deepest regions of your heart, admit to yourself whether you would die if it should be denied you to write. This above all: ask yourself in your night’s quietest hour: must I write? Dig down into yourself for a deep answer. And if it should be affirmative, if it is given to you to respond to this serious question with a loud and simple “I must,” then construct your life according to this necessity; your life right into its most inconsequential and slightest hour must become a sign and witness of this urge.
Everything else is just details.
