The Enormity of it All: or Trying to Contain that Which has been Unbound

Looking back at my post of a week ago, it seems so distant now, that simplicity and that happiness.   I do know that even as I wrote that post, things were slipping, perhaps only imperceptibly to all but the most attentive, the most involved on a day to day basis, and yet I am happy to be reminded.

In the meantime I have been absent from my normal pursuits, from this blog, from blogs and the internets in general although I do keep up, somewhat marginally with personal mail.  Rather I have been focused on the big push to tackle the piles that have accumulated and which I had been happily ignoring throughout January and February.  Perhaps it is a spring cleaning sort of thing.  Perhaps I see bits of confusion and randomness poking out of the cracks here and there and tackling the piles at least is something I can control.  Control I must.   

  And so I have been tackling the books which have been piled on the floor.  When I created a room for the caregiver, I dismantled my small library, my favorite the room in the house and the contents have been piled on the living room floor ever since.  I took the shelving system and put it up in the family room.  I lost a few shelves.  There are radiators here, and windows that were not present in the original location.

I have not really gained much space.  There were shelves here before on the wall to the right, and between the window and the corner.  But the aluminum system from Rakks looks much nicer than the old sytem of mismatched wall brackets and boards.    The simple truth is that I lost 126 board feet of shelving and have only added 36 feet to the family room storage so there has been much purging and much metaphorical pulling of hair and mental angst.  There will be many books that will end up going into boxes until some future date as well because I cannot bring myself to get rid of them all.

When I read Larry McMurtry's story about collecting books I thought I was not a collector, and in a sense I am not, in that I cannot collect a subject just for the sake of having a complete set.  I have to like each book.  But I do collect the books I love, look for better copies, consider each one old friends, and have multiple versions of certain things, such as my five versions of the various works of the Pearl Poet including one version in the "original" text, one cleaned up middle english version, and at least three translations of Gawain, each different and each prized.  I suppose that the love of early English literature never dies just as I cannot imagine life without an occasional foray into Spenser or Skelton.

So it is about condensing and making choices.  I learned that coding books, especially the newer ones, are often available as PDF files, and I can purchase PDF files of paper books I own very cheaply, hence one small shelf has been freed.   And I am still on the fence about mass-market paperbacks versus digital copies of books.  Most mass-market paperbacks are sent on their way after I read them, but there are a few favorite authors I hold on to but feel no need to upgrade to hard copies.  I increasingly find that I prefer the portability of the kindle to even a small paperback at the gym or when out and about, but the kindle does not lend itself to picking up a book and reading a random page here and there before putting the book back on the shelf.  There is a stack of books that are currently in this kind "save, toss, or go digital" limbo, and I suppose I will eventually make a decision as I continue to catalog books and decide what will fit on the remaining shelves and what will get boxed until the next phase.

Reading Thomas Cahill's How The Irish Saved Civilization, has kind of played into this general mental turmoil in unexpected ways as well.  I picked it up thinking I could read it and get it off the shelves, which will indeed happen.  It is entertaining and a good, light, introduction to the subject.  It served as a bit of a refresher course in a way, as I have, and have read, many of his primary sources:  Bede, Augustine, Ausonius,  even Kinsella's translation of the Tain, as well as many of the referenced works on Medeival and church history.  Again it is that fascination with the medeival that serves me well.  It served me well in a career too, as I was hired for my first computer programming job precisely because of my interest in medieval literature, and would agree with my former mentor that there is much similarity in the mind-set requried for both.

But what surprised me about Cahill's book was the way I started questioning my decision to transfer more of the less important stuff to digital copies.  I suddenly started wondering what would happen if the computer networks went down, or there were no more electricity, and I would undergo a momentary flight of panic.  I am sure the tragedy in Japan has also fed into these musings for, as unimaginable as it all is to me, and as sorry as I feel for these people for the pain and tragedy of their loss, it is also a reminder of how tenuous our hold on life and civilization really is in this world.  The Romans were just as confident that their world would endure forever as we are that our digital information system is the future of all knowledge.    At the moment I shall take comfort in my computers but also in my own small space and my own volumes of cloth and paper.

But I suspect I shall be preoccupied with these tasks at least through the end of this month, so postings will be light.  I am oft exhausted and although I think of things I want to write, by the time I sit, my brain is a scrambled up bit of connections and images and incoherent fragments.  By the end of the day  I crave mindless visual stimulation and the simplicity of stockinette stitch in my hands.

After the books I shall tackle the closets, including G's old closet, and the piles of fabric and yarn that were also displaced.  But I shall emerge in time for spring perhaps with a flowering of creative energy to accompany the flowering of the landscape.

As you can see, Spring is most definitely arriving to the Hudson Valley.  The first crocus bulbs burst into flower yesterday, and I have a nice batch of small irises as well, even though there are still also a few piles of snow scattered here and there across the lawn.

I would not also be surprised if, just as I say that I will be absent because I must finally deal with all this stuff in my life before it drives me batty, just as I think I am overwhelmed, my voice decides to emerge from the hole in which it has entrenched itself.  At the moment, however,  I continue to feel more overwhelmed by piles than inspired by flowers.