Then a two-minute walk and you'll be at the Starock Bookstore. Okay, it's not really a bookstore. It's a dude's house. He's in his sixties, retired, and thin with disheveled hair. He has never married and has no children. He has lived in this hillside house for thirty years.The only books he sells are book he has written and self-published.
The house is pretty spartan. White walls, few furnishings. You will enter by the back door and he will lead you to the front room in the house where he will show you his original watercolors. They are small, but they are beautiful. Each one is done on a standard piece of computer paper. They are all cheaply framed. Each piece has a lot of white space left on the page and the watercolors bring to mind stars and planets and comets. Each painting looks as if it came to him in a dream. They are not for sale.
He'll finish his tour and his story sitting at a small, two-person table in the kitchen area near the back door where you originally came in. Across the room will be a modest size bookshelf that holds multiple copies of each of his books which he's written and published in both Chinese and English. His paintings have provided the cover art for each of his books.
His books have something to do with the stars and the galaxies and a star traveler. It all made sense to me when he explained it to me on Saturday, but it all seems a little fuzzy now. Just when he has you intrigued and ready to hand over a few bucks for one of his book, only then will he let you know that he is all out of the English language versions and doesn't know when or if he will be printing more copies.
It is then that you will realize that the last twenty minutes hasn't been one long, protracted sales pitch. It has been one man sincerely sharing his life's passion with you. So now relax, settle into the cheap, plastic dinette chair and allow the conversation to flow. The next forty minutes will fly by, I promise.
He will ask you where you are from and when he finds out that you have come a very long distance to visit him, he will give you a hand-written scroll with Chinese calligraphy on it. He will refuse to take any money. It is his gift to you weary world traveler.
Life Lesson: pick a destintion out of the tour book. Follow the directions carefully and then just before you get there, hang a sharp left.
-Jack
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