Quarantine Day 9
Books and Midsummer
Perfect summer morning here. The 52º N Latitude really makes a difference after the 35º of Marediana. The nights really noticeably shorter, we are waking well before 5am and it is already light. Curtains? I really don’t like shutting the light out. It feels more natural to let the body cope with seasonality and geography. Of course in Crete we are also 23º East, not so much an astronomical difference as a cultural one. So there is something unique about every Lat and Long on earth. This morning is undeniably sweet for not being cloudy or rainy, given that we are where we are. I am grateful for the summer weather and being able to treat our tiny garden as an outside space while wrestling with the sifting of belongings etc. Segue to:
Yes, back to books. Not just books, it’s DVDs and VHSs too (only our own films, I swear). I belong to the FT Books Cafe on FB and I asked that group for help in developing an algorithm for keep / lose. I suppose predictably they leapt into the keep camp, almost to a person. But here’s my dilemma, the books played a big part in making me who I am, but now I am who I am, do I need to be reminded of the process? I have changed; my interests have shifted, and as we can’t dip into the same river twice, I cannot re-visit the pool in which I was baptised. Sorry about the complex image, but I am really struggling with this. In my current yoga study and practice, the stress is definitely on the NOW. Difficult enough to perceive the moment, let alone the thread of moments that lead to this place. So if I followed this thought to its logical conclusion, I would divest myself of all my psychology and feminist books.
Of course they carry a lot of nostalgia, taking me back through the past in a surprisingly visceral way. Is that a good reason to keep them?
Now the counterargument: I can open almost any of those influential books – an example, Winnicott’s THE PIGGLE – and read a couple of pages.
Out jump associations, place, time, ideas, threads….
Realistically, my thin trickle of a lifetime is nowhere near enough to float this ship of desire to immerse, to know, to envisage, let alone to work with this flood of material.
Fiction is proving a bit easier, you will be glad to know. I will keep a few personal classics that I might read on the beach or in my future shady garden hammock.
Maybe I am working toward a solution. I will confer with Al, as he says that books are an excellent way of improving a room’s acoustics.
Covid-19 test done on the morning of Day 9 and posted. Complete failure to log in to Eurofins website so who knows where in the ether those results will go.