Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Mourning for the Fall of a Titan - Borders

Borders opened the age of the large bookstore and proved to be highly successful in encouraging the masses to read.

Now, the Borders at the mall close to where I live is being liquidated. Yesterday and today, it felt like visiting an old friend in his probable deathbed who is having his leg amputated.

I stopped by this store at least two or three times a week to buy a book or to have coffee at the Seattle coffee shop, inside which I became friendly with the workers. The people at the cash register and the information booth knew me. I have a Borders card as well as a Barnes Noble one. I paid for these cards sometime last year when I learned the bookstores were having trouble and made as many purchases as I could afford ever since.

Yesterday was the store workers' last day at work. Most of them left with boxes of personal items. A couple of them stopped to talk to my husband and me. The manager, who is without a job now, said, "We did everything we could. We put up sales to 40% even 60%. We weren't successful. Now, watch it. Tomorrow as soon as the doors open, people will flock in and raid everything."

The other one said, "As of now, the liquidators own everything. Tomorrow, they'll sell everything supposedly at a reduced price, but the prices will be as close to the original price as the liquidators can handle."

"What will happen to the unsold merchandise?" I asked.

"They will sell it back to the wholesalers," she said.

They were so right. Since we needed something from a department store, we went to the mall again this afternoon and checked Borders, too. Most books are 20% off the ticket price, and the lines at the cash registers are unbelievably long.

I didn't buy anything. I can't. It is too painful.

But then, the same had happened with Walden's, Dalton's, and other small bookstores. At that time, I didn't feel so bad when Borders acquired them because, even though I had cards from those stores and I was a regular customer, if I stood in an isle to look inside a book, a store worker would rush to me to stop me from tasting a tidbit, even if–in all probability--I would have bought the book.

Borders has filed chapter 11, and maybe luckily, not chapter 7. So they are not off the scene totally...yet. Of 640 stores they are closing only 200. Unfortunately, one of the 200 is the one I frequented. They'll still be online where I can use my card, but it won't be the same. I'll miss the smell of coffee at the Seattle Coffee Shop and the smile of the coffee-shop worker who knew me by name and that I didn't want cream on my Mocha Latte. I'll miss the attendants on the floor who eagerly showed where anything was, although I have, over time, memorized the floor plan.

A psychologist friend once said, "Mourning occurs in response to an individual's loss or to the death of a valued entity." I guess Borders was a highly valued entity. The feeling of loss is the price we humans pay for our attachments and vulnerability to what we deem as part our being inside our environment.

Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm,
         Peace let the dew send!
Lofty designs must close in like effects...

Robert Browning