A couple years ago, I started the process of moving my home office from the smallest room of my house to the middle sized room that also houses my internet equipment, and I started by moving my bookshelves. You can see back there where the first bookshelf has already been moved from
Because anyone who has ever moved a bookshelf will tell you don’t do it with the books on it, I first emptied it, having to handle each book individually and move it to a liminal holding space, (also called the floor of the new office). As I was moving the books, I found myself glancing over titles, and have small thoughts about each book. Like any self aware book owner, I own far more books than I have read. Any book owner who has read all the books they own has a poor curiosity, lives in a box, or reads beyond all other mortal interests.
There are books I bought and have yet to read, books I received, and never intended to read (All these Tom Clancy, John Grisham, and Michael Crichton books, my ‘Dad book library’ if you will), and then I started finding books I had utterly forgotten about. ‘A Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter’ Salman Rushdie’s ‘The Satanic Verses’, and a hundred other books that are irresistible to me, but somehow I never read them, and then completely forgot them. And I should admit I felt guilty for forgetting them.
But beyond guilt, I was put into mind of Marie Kondo, who famously said in her Netflix series, to hold each of your possessions, and if it doesn’t ‘Spark Joy’ get rid of it. I’m deeply aware of the storm of feuding opinions that this was generating when it aired, and I’m sorry for Marie, who made the very easy mistake of saying something generalized on the internet that took on a life of its own. As far as I have ever been aware, Marie is a lovely person who likes home organization, and shouldn't have been at the center of a an internet firestorm.
But I digress. Where was I?
Handling my books. I don’t know if it was a problem of translation, or just a problem of generalized intention, but what I felt wasn't exactly Joy but about being reminded of ‘Value’ and relatedly ‘Values’. I would hold a book briefly, like the Tao of Jeet Kune Do, by Bruce Lee, and be reminded of the ways in which that book had changed me(Since I’ve had and reread it dozens of times since high school), or hold Robert M Pirsig’s “Lila: an inquiry into morals” Which i have owned for about a decade now, but haven’t read because I’m still working on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance(Coincidentally, a study of Values).
As humans we contain multitudes, but by limited perception, we don’t know where our shoes are. There is value in exploring your own space, in going into places, even just in your own home, and taking the time to rediscover the things there, the memories they attach to, and the opportunities that are offered to pick up a thought you put down and follow it.
I’m Ursa, I like you, and I’ll see you again soon.
