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Sherif Abdelkarim

Debt to Debt

‌The True, the Good, the Beautiful. They’re just around the corner, in the next corridor; they’re in the next book, the one you haven’t read, or in the next stack, the one you haven’t got to. But you’ll get to it someday. And when you do—when you do—

—John Williams, Stoner

Dear Grad School Debt,

I write you in our mutual capacity as esteemed Amazon vendors. You don’t know me, nor do you know this yet, nor did you solicit this epistle, but I know you. Well. You could say I shared your boat, once, was in your very shoes. You could say I was you, once. If only I read this once. If only you will twice.

You’ll learn on the job, of course, but insofar as it’s possible to know this now, know that, as with any emporium, Amazon runs a tight yet no less ample ship. You think you’ll sell some books to ease some debt and I get it. You’ll say you’ll sell some books maybe a month or two and maybe even make a profit. Well and good, but think again.

To fill that modern Dutch East outfit—that Amazon—you’ll want to ship out oceans of volumes just to break even each month. You’ve got what it takes materially to sell. All you lack is the trust to let go.

Let go.

Lose something every day. Lose lots of things, all the things, then watch and see. I don’t say wait and see. So savor not the selling so much as your race to waste that debt, for which you’ll gain everything and more.

Let go those books you got in heavy bulk, books you never earned, books you never read, were never yours. You’ll tell me you’ll get to them and I’m not saying you never will. I’m saying ensure you never get to these this way. That’s the mindset. Execute your sales like some disinterested general, some numb blood-insatiate who surfeits just to feel some nothing.

Do as much.

Give Debt Hell, for Debt enjoys sufficient Animus to brave blunt trauma, long gashes, gunshots, impalements. Give it Hell and pray for pyrrhic victory, for you, too, should die in the process, as all things die.

Obsess over interest. Make it count, your death. Make it spectacular at Wells Fargo, splay your credit card suicide, spray their William Morris walls with a Pollock flourish. And keep it personal, my Seller. The purple year I pumped payment after payment into Bank of America, you’d think we were lovers of the mythic sort, bound by cosmic rape, etched in stellar verse, our story constellated. The night I drew on Citi’s lawn was never business. The night I cracked the transom with my Glock and left no witness.

Interest’s not the word. You show your high school crush some interest, your child’s social development. Our union eclipsed all unhealthy affinity, transgressed devotion and disinterest.

That purple year.

Sell swiftly, young Seller. Sell steady. Sell every book at an overt loss. Some books you’ll earn three dollars on if that. The losses add up in good time. Since Amazon takes deep cuts on every sell, and since you’ll pay for shipment—always media mail—you’ll want to clear some shelves. Ship it by the plank, your Gatsby library. Read a leaf or two on a sale’s way out, read books like epigraphs, the few you reach.

Treat books as epitaphs, not sacred cows.

Slaughter to save.

Serious. Post everything and see.

Ship within 24 hours of orders received.

Sell Smiley’s signed A Thousand Acres. Sell Brandon’s Arkansas. Easy.

Sell Gregory of Tours. Gerald of Wales. Done and done.

Sell Loeb, every green and red. Start with Homer. End with Vergil. Ovid will have felt breezy.

Sell all of the Library of American Literature. Very easy.

I sold the Oxford Medieval Texts—the series!

I sold Furnivall’s copy of Confessio Amantis, signed by Macaulay himself. Name your price.

Sell literally every book you own. And every book will sell once you voyage out. I mean, just clear your intentions.

Meantime, don’t sit on rare books, or underestimate Acceptable-condition items. Ship every new and old at high and low and see them off.

Your Penguin classics. Flow state sales on automatic.

Your Bantam dimes. Ship them the heavens out.

Your self-help bestsellers. Watch’m sail.

Your Bibles. All these sales.

Sell any book anyone has ever given you, just don’t sell under $7. These you throw away.

I sold every book I could sell, from academic heirlooms, to grammars of languages I haven’t got to, to texts assigned, sold midsemester, cut from syllabi postfactum. The rest I threw away.

I sold Volume Four of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The rest I threw away.

Then I sold things. Some tools. Art supplies. A tactical knife. The rest I threw away.

Enjoy our process, my kind correspondent. I catalogued and packaged everything I had back then in brown paper until my life appeared a Koonstallation. I wrapped in automatic, fashioned the smoothest yet sturdiest folds, underpinned by bubble pack, gripped in gawdy Scotch, the tablets sliding right off Postmaster’s scale, gloss as fish, thick as seal.

You’ll gain much rapport with your post officers. You’ll learn their names.

“Does this parcel contain anything liquid, fragile, perishable, or potentially hazardous?”

“No ma’am, just big ideas.”

“Please hit NO on the screen, sir.”

“Just words.”

Since every book will sell, your popularity will surprise you, and maybe concern you, like are my tastes that popular? For my part it pleases me. As a college professor it pleases me to see everyone ordering all the books, presumably to read, from everywhere, every American. Their names lose their strangeness fast. And when their names and titles just don’t match, and they won’t, let this pleasantly defy you.

You’ll ship every city, known and unknown, every Arlington and Centreville in America. You’ll discover Atlanta, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri. Atlanta, California.

Then you’ll reach this state, where you think you can sell forever, easy and effortless, where all you do is sail. That’s when you’ll think, one calm, cloudless morning, the dolphins dancing with Horizon’s diamonds, her waves waving you over, Mainland as vividly asway, her rocks unseen, you’ll think I can sell Anything. That’s when you delete your account.

Tomorrow, borrow from your lending library. Memorize the letters you crave. Purchase only those you’ve read already.

Today, pray for guidance. And knowledge. And wisdom. And peace. And freedom. And love.

Pray for better tomorrows to match the best todays, every day, until the Day.

Smooth sales, sweet Seller. May the sun shine smiles down on you in warm array, and all the rest.

Yours,

Debt Free Grad

‌‌

About the Writer:
Sherif Abdelkarim teaches English literature and historical linguistics at Grinnell College in Iowa. His poetry has appeared in Green Linden Press. He is the author of Sweatproof and Tall People: Short Stories, both in progress.

Image: Bookseller/Street Trader by Erich Büttner (1889-1936). Ink and gouache on paper. 128 × 150 mm. 1930. Public domain.

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