(and a thought on tariffs)

I’ve moved more books than read them. Shelves, piles, and stacks journeyed from eight different homes to be reorganized for renewed perusal. They sit like a multitude of concubines hoping to be picked for my morning coffee. I’ll wager several novels could have been written with the time expended in boxing, shlepping, and hauling these word saturated volumes.

Oh, to clarify, I have read a good portion of them. Portion is the operative word. I don’t have enough bookmarks, so coffee shop napkins, sticky notes, pictures of old girlfriends, and junk mail suffice. And there they are, pressed and stacked in the case, with weeds sticking up periodically to testify to unfinished business.

A relative recently let me know she quit smoking. I asked her how it was going, and she hasn’t had the ‘want to’ since.

Should I quit buying books? A couple are in route to my mailbox now while the island of misfit books sit sequestered on a shelf in the corner. That’s about 20% of what I possess. The rest are in the basement huddled in maddening crowds.

Jerry, what are you doing? What have you done? What happened to the simple days of comic books and Suzy-Q’s?

Now let’s say. Let’s just say I could throw all these books into a giant colander and rinse them profusely in hopes that the cream from them distill down to catch phrases and fascinating scenes. Maybe someday someone will create an AI flux capacitor for books. I could slip them into this farming combine looking thing and it would spit them up to the great cloud of my choosing.

But “I have my books and poetry to protect me.” Paul Simon

They are like a great barrier reef between my ignorance and the power of knowledge. Wait. What? Such pious gobbledygook.

Are my books binding on me? Are the pages turning over and over in my stomach? Am I running on from sentences? Are forwards and afterwords giving me sea sickness? I confess not. Because I haven’t read to the end of many of the bound titles standing at perpendicular attention in the bookcase.

Just now I counted eleven bookmarks, and a smattering of dust covers tucked in, mid-thought-like.

I hope upon my death my children have the strength to drop my library off at The Salvation Army.

Afterword: One thought on tariffs: They exist.