Going Backwards

July 6
Friday

Still scorching so left Duke at home when I headed to Ft. Wayne. I'm stir crazy, too.

Before leaving I ordered about 15 books from Amazon. In Ft. Wayne I bought two at Barnes & Noble and another eight or nine at the Half Price Bookstore.

I'm going backwards. It was just two months ago that I went through my books and cut my library to what I thought were the bare essentials. I gave away about one hundred books to friends, the church got 300-400 religious volumes and my friend Jim came from West Virginia and hauled 500 others home. 

It hurt me to do that. I love books. Since that time I have purchased another 100 or so. Most of those I will want to go with me. Maybe I'm more than just stir crazy.

Bare essentials where books are concerned were for me about 500 or so; 150 Christian, 40 other religions, approximately 75 Library of America titles, 50 poetry, 50 history and biography, 90 or 100, novels and Lord knows what else. Now I've added another hundred. And I'm nowhere near ready to leave.

All I plan to take with me to Mexico are some clothes, a computer, camera, kitchen stuff, a few keepsakes and Duke's stuff. And books. Maybe a few paintings and photographs, too, if I can't find a good home for them. But mostly books.

My hope was to strip myself of non-essentials. I'm doing a lousy job.

Jim is the only person I know who has a larger and more varied library than I. He will love it when I have to cull these. If I cull them.

Earlier I said I was a monk. It is hard to imagine a monk on a journey with 500 books in his pack.  

What does it say that it has hardly concerned me to shed antiques, clothes, furniture, family heirlooms, photos--even ancient coins and artifacts--as well as leave my home and say farewell to friends, family and my church, but cannot part with books?

I am a strange man indeed.

There once was a traveling monk
Tried to pack all his stuff in a trunk.
But the trunk was too small,
And he wanted it all,
So he had to sit home in a funk.

Not so subtle as a haiku. But it states the problem.

Much more damning is this from Lao-Tzu:

No guilt is greater than giving in to desire,

No disaster is greater than discontent,

No crime is more grievious than the desire for gain.

 Therefore,

            Contentment that derives from knowing when to be content is eternal contentment.

                                                  Tao Te Ching

Discipline, I need discipline!

Notice the geese!
They fly one thousand miles
with no pack at all.