Of Cats and Bibliophiles
Your portal is of fantasy and science-fiction movies, my portal is of an old storefront. It is living and breathing, heaving beneath the hot sun, and has seen enough stories and epics of everyday humankind set in glory on the sidewalk as it holds within its four walls. This old structure is Abraxas Books in Daytona Beach, Florida.
It’s an otherworldly atmosphere; guarded with an unassuming exterior façade, welcoming customers in with an illuminated green and blue open sign. But its contents cannot contain themselves, because if the more curious of passerby look into the paneled windows for even a moment, its everyday cloak amongst the palm tree cheer betrays itself with rowed books of Nostradamus, the Civil War, and the first of many replica human skulls. Or at least, I assume it is a replication. It heralds me inward.
The heavy wooden door is propped open, a sort of portal. There are walls of bookcases, carefully ordered and filled from every genre imaginable, from poetry to science to war to the occult. This is the work of Jim Sass, owner of this realm of knowledge. He is a figure out of a fable, tall and with a beard that could rival Gandalf’s, and with an encyclopedic grasp of seemingly all subjects. You could try to stump him with an obscure question, but I believe you will be far more likely to end up standing and listening in complete interest and awe than anything else.
If you visit, then you are acquainted with the quiet ruler of this land. He is a constant shadow in the form of a black and white cat with a distinguished white moustache of his own, and a dark silhouette stalking the aisles and observing the happenings of his kingdom, but never straying too far from Jim. A mist among the millions of words. Sterling has a keen eye that peers at you from the corners, making fast judgment about whether or not he likes you. If he doesn’t, you will know. If he doesn’t like the scent of your cats at home, you will also know. I hear he is an expert swordsman with his little paw-daggers. Jim says Sterling came into his life through happenstance, running out in front of his car as a kitten, eleven years ago in October. Since then, they have been inseparable, so closely bonded that the cat can drape himself across Jim’s shoulders like the furry collar of a cloak and be almost unnoticed. It would be amusing if it weren’t simply too perfect.
Like most occupations of this kind, it is a pursuit of passion, and so it didn’t surprise me to learn that this store has been here for 18 years. What did surprise me, however, was Jim giving the exact date: May 5th, 2000. In his own words, he is “The kid who got to own the candy store.” When a former bookstore in the area, Mandala Books, was set to close, Abraxas came forth. And so too, this new location came into being. It is one of the oldest on the street, and that adds to the ambience. When I asked if life had influenced the decision and if it has in turn influenced him, he replied with both. “It’s almost as if you’re married to the business,” he says, and for the first 5 years being of open, Jim tirelessly worked seven days a week curating and building Abraxas. Since then, he’s cut down to being open a modest six days a week. When you are so dedicated to your calling, and so simply enamored by it in the first place, I am again not surprised to learn that the longest “vacation” in these 18 years has been due to Florida’s infamous annual hurricanes or trips the hospital.
The name Abraxas itself has a long and esoteric history, believed to have originated in Gnosticism. It’s been used as the name of a deity and god, a demon, a name that aligns with 365 days and contains seven letters like the planets and zodiac, throughout grimoires, and Greco-Egyptian times. Its symbol was also used in amulets, some held by the Knight’s Templar; Jim brings to my attention how curious it is to think about, such Christians carrying this decidedly non-Christian symbol, and what momentous history there must be surrounding it. Or as the name of Draco Malfoy’s grandfather in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, if you wannabe wizards happen to be younger than 1,800 years old.
The material here can immediately be recognized as extraordinary, and Jim turns to me and says, “This isn’t just a place for frivolous reading.” And it also isn’t just a place to pick up paperbacks for your annual beachside half-a-romance-novel perusal; it is a serious literary arsenal. While you certainly can find a casual book, the vacationer customer base here is juxtaposed with those of university philosophers, mathematicians — all the way to Catholic priests and Hare Krishna, Hindu pujari. I immediately feel out of my league, as my first memory here was from seven years ago where he kindly dug out boxes of Star Trek novels for me. Not exactly academic research, but we all start somewhere.
Jim began early, avidly consuming the writing of J.R.R. Tolkien, which he’d come to understand later was not merely for the attraction to fantasy worlds, but rather for where it all was routed: myth, lore, language, and the great sagas. He was 10-years-old, a young Michigan native, when he had already read the Lord of the Rings trilogy 11 times. It fueled an interest in the constructed languages and runes. The question of his favorite book, however, is met with silence and then an incredible sigh. It must be quite the exhausting question for a bibliophile. But the contemplative look quickly dissolves into an almost mischievous smile through his thick beard, telling me, “The Reign of Quantity and the Sign of Times” by René Guénon. At first I tried to nod along, as if of course that is his favorite book, but I knew he could see through that, and that was precisely the intent here: to have fun with the question and put readers through a loop. I tried to research it, and it left me laughing even more, because I was more puzzled than when I began. Well played.
The passage of time, the location of a place, the physiognomy of faces — these are braided and bound, gently interlacing in ways that lead a portage of unknown to the very much known. Somehow, everything we will come to know is already in play. As we are speaking, I’ve looked at this little black bowl several times, or rather a small cauldron, filled with bundles of dried sweetgrass. Each are woven and held together in a tangible exemplification of these thoughts. Much like sage, their more commonly known counterpart through popular culture, it is used to burn and cleanse a space through the ceremony of smudging.
This store holds a lot of coincidences. Uncanny coincidences. Things that would “never happen.” It is one of the key themes of our conversation, the discussion of how the world is inexplicably connected. It is too frequent to ignore, he mentions, the amount of times he and colleagues have mentioned a person in conversation, and then in the next moment they would appear at the store’s doorway. Coincidence hit me later, when I realized that the first time I have used makeup to form Algiz on my face, a rune from the Old Norse alphabet, was the day I decided to walk into Abraxas. It is a rune of protection, two branches coming off the center like that of horns. Jim has this symbol tattooed on his forearm.
As we speak, my eyes fall toward the skulls scattered around, and the statues of religious figures from Buddhist, Hindu, and Christian origin, contrasting with one of Vlad the Impaler. Jim is standing behind his desk, telling me of his books that are many hundreds of years old, all while encircled by a cluster of knives and antiqued swords on the wall. It’s an eclectic collection, strengthening the mysterious aura. And countless photographs of one very particular black and white cat.
Why a bookstore in the age of the Internet? Finding one of this nature is like discovering a beautiful and rare stone. They offer knowledge beyond the arguable “portal” of a computer screen, as some of it simply cannot be conveyed through any other medium. The Internet is an overload to be skimmed, whereas here, you absorb. While there aren’t as many as stores as there once were, it is remarkable to find out just how deep their interlaced pages go. Jim explains how it is a community with other book curators, that they all know each other. All the way in Massachusetts lies another little literary realm that I’ve visited, and he too knew of it. The bookstore, the true bookstore, is a breed that isn’t as prominent as it once was. Those involved are in it for life, connected through the strings of sweetgrass and weathered pages, and they are a force.
Abraxas is a gateway, and the journey has only begun.
