Allure

Saturday: a dry cough, a tickle in the chest, active especially in the evening, a precursor of a cold? How about a day of rest; no politicking in the square, no shopping, no visiting, no going out, no anything, so that I just get better. Just staying at home with my library (or, less pretentious, collection of books). Oh joy.

I love my library; I've assembled it book by book, each book a promise of pleasure, and the whole a promise of climactic satisfaction. The book acquirer in me anticipates with each new purchase that moment when I'll sit down and savor the volume, turn to its table of contents, start at page one, then learn and enjoy whatever is in it, whatever originated in the genius and scholarship of the author and put down on paper. This is a topic I'd like to know more about; that is a collection with an interesting premise; the other will help me get better at something I want to learn how to do, a veritable panopticon.

A random section foot long section of a bookshelf consists of 8 books of poetry (thin, Houseman,Oliver, Montague, Wilbur), 2 novels of manners by Auchincloss, Bates on the Amazon, Murakami on running, Van Doren on Dryden, an interpretation of the art of Sargent, and a dialogue between Martin Buber and a Wehrmacht chaplain. More than enough in just one portion of a portion.

Each time I pay and walk away with one (or several) books in hand, I feel rich, owner of the key to a world. Under my arms, multiple worlds. On my bookshelves, worlds of worlds. All for me, mine to choose when and where I please, mine to contemplate as live possibilities, my universe. Looking at a shelf, a wall of shelves, I imagine consuming everything all at once, an orgy of read-revelry that swallows me up, as I swallow all the books up.

Yet, on the mend as I am today, what do I do?  Read a few chapters from this book, a passage from that, browse a poem or two from another. It's all good, but not the over-the-top pleasure that the presence of this library suggests I should be having--because I can only read one thing at a time. The alluring offer of overwhelming satisfaction remains beyond my grasp. I'm teased; partially pleased, but finally mocked and provoked.

There's the acquirer in me, and the reader in me. The acquirer dreams of bliss. The reader knows that bliss comes moment by moment. Both are good but the acquirer knows no limits; the reader is very aware of them.

You, book-buyer. Lay off. Or else, find your twin, Book Disposer, and put him to work. One out for each in. But Disposer only shows up in extremis. How then to manage this greedy aspect of myself, this almost Other, this weaver of intoxications, this pander.

Buying books, let's face it, is an addictive habit independent of my long-term better judgment, but complicit with my impulses. After all, there are libraries and  books online and Amazon if ever I need any particular book. Do I have to have these things around me like a court, and I the king?

There are other addictions that make life unmanageable, and from crises of unmanageability come the internal confrontations and clarifications of prioirities. For now, I can let be vague and latiitudinarian, and surprise myself: did I buy that? Well, I'll find a place for it.

But when, in the late afternoon, a tricky time of day for me anyway, I encountered the splurger's omnivorous appetite incarnate in these laden bookshelves I found myself torn, desiring and frustrated by it, or wanting but not able to rise to the occasion, as if I had bitten off more than I could chew, unable to swallow, unwilling to spit out.

This isn't serious, I think, a matter of negotiation for space (oh, if I have to move!), but it is serious, and a matter of who I think I am and want to be. Do I have time to read, much less, 'mark, learn and inwardly digest' what I have. Is the Acquirer the Eternal Youth of the boundless future, and the more sober writer of these words the one increasing aware of mortality?

I don't want to give up the amplitude, the largesse, the arms-wide attitude to books and their topics and themes. I treasure the desire for the treasure. And yet...there's the reproach. Ah, forget second thoughts. Let me luxuriate.