City Lights Books is probably the coolest bookstore ever.
Being a fan of the The Beat Generation of poets and authors , City Lights, is a touchstone.
Purely serendipitiously I happened to find the book "Peace is Every Step" by Thich Nhat Hanh in that bookstore years ago. If there was ever one book that changed me and helped me calm down it was that small text. It's paradoxical since I loved the descriptions of the "wild" drugging, drinking, driving from the beat writers, mainly Jack Kerouac and "On the Road". I was in City Light's thinking about how cool those guys were...and then took home a book by a peace-filled Vietnamese monk.
Part of it is growing up I suppose. Jack Kerouac was interested in Zen Buddhism, tragically he didn't figure it out well enough before he killed himself, with drugs and alcohol.
Thank God for giving me a chance to work on growing up.
