CULLING MY BOOKS: on reading, reveling, and releasing

Part of my silent time over the past two months has been occupied with the process of sorting through my possessions. "Sorting through" sounds simple and rather serene, but in reality the process is tedious and messy. I gave away or otherwise disposed of the stuff that was easy years ago. What is left is there for a reason. Usually, even, a good one.

Still, something in my soul said that it was time for much of it to go.

Culling my collection of books was one of the more interesting, and oddly enough for a writer the easiest, parts of the process. Perhaps because my work requires me to acquire new books regularly, I've never been especially reluctant to let the older ones go. It's easy to imagine someone else, in say our local library's Used Book Depot, enjoying the volume I've just donated—to imagine, that is to say, the cycle of ownership and reading continuing pleasantly and productively on before and beyond the point in time I happen to own a book. And it's always been clear to me that if I don't empty the shelves out fairly regularly, the house will all too quickly become overrun.

My test for keeping books is generally simple, consisting of only three questions. Do I truly love the book? Do I return to it regularly? Is it out of print, and likely to remain out of print for the foreseeable future? Of the three questions the last is the most practical and sometimes the most compelling. Living in a small town rather than my old home ground of New York City, the lesser works of, say, W.H. Auden or Virginia Woolf are not easy to obtain; even online old-book resources such as Alibris can be spotty in terms of book availability and price. Some of the paperback editions of so-called "literary" authors I bought back in the seventies are thus real treasures to me, in contrast to recent and/or mainstream novels and nonfiction that the library is likely to own and that Amazon and other retailers are equally likely to stock.

So I let go of several shelf-fulls of contemporary novels and nonfiction with only the slightest qualm. More difficult were a group of books on writing I like, but which don't meet the test of my first or second questions. Even more difficult were some of the books from my father's personal library (the subject for a later blog post). Like most objects once owned by someone loved and lost, so to speak, these volumes were not valuable as books so much as what author Seth Godin calls "souvenirs." My three practical questions didn't apply to them well; instead, a whole other kind of scrutiny had to take place.

As always seems to be the case in the aftermath of one of these book clearing-outs, I have found myself reading more widely than usual in my own collection of books. I am inspired to revisit authors I had forgotten, discovering that I like so-and-so more than I used to and so-and-so less, being surprised that I never finished one book or that I made the notes I did in another. In this way my little library comes alive again right at the times some of it is passing on, as though the very process of loss have intensified its pleasure and value...not unlike, say, life itself.

LITTLE BITES

At our most recent DeClutter Your Creativity group, we discussed finding ways to nurture ourselves through the kind of simple, brief actions that fit into even the most hectic schedule. As an example, we looked at some books that are structured in little "bites" rather than lengthy texts. Some of the examples we talked about are listed below. If you have a different book of this kind you like, do please let us know about it by commenting on this post.

Simple Abundance by Sarah ban Breathnach. A classic among women's daybooks, this rich collection offers a year's worth of mini-essays on the places where simplification and richness (of all kinds) meet.

Until Today! by Iyanla Vanzant focuses on letting go of what doesn't work emotionally and spiritually to move into a less burdened and more authentic life. Her approach is more intense than ban Breathnach's, and more focused on healing wounds and pain. Yet it's still accessible, and powerful, even if read or used a single page at a time.

Meditations for Women who Do Too Much by Anne Wilson Schaef spawned a mini-industry of books, cards, journals, and calendars, and for good reason. It really hit a nerve in modern women, and even the New York Times, not always kind to self-help, praised it. As with ban Breathnach's and Vanzant's books, its sequence of brief pieces helps readers center and focus themselves on even the most hectic days.


The Courage to Change by the Al-Anon Family Group Inc. is designed to help readers one day at a time, as all AA programs do. Its Al-Anon origin focuses it on drawing clear and loving boundaries between our lives, hearts and minds and those of others.

Wide Open by Randi Feuerholm-Watts gathers together a series of ideas to inspire creative journalling. Formatted as a group of cards, each with its own artwork on one side and text on the other, it's a fun and surprising way to create a bit of time for art-making or creativity each day, each week, or just whenever you can. I personally enjoy the card format, which allows me to pull one card at a time rather than using a whole book; others seem to like it too, so there are lots of "book products" now formatted this way.

Archetype Cards by Caroline Myss. One of the group's participants spoke about the use of tools like tarot cards to provide a relatively quick, intuitive "read" on what's going on inside in the midst of busy times. We all agreed that believing in or deeply understanding the Tarot, or any other system, isn't really necessary for this use; the value comes simply from taking a moment in touch with our deeper selves. I'm linking here to Caroline Myss's deck of archetype cards, which don't have the same fortunetelling element as the Tarot but still serve the purpose just mentioned. Myss writes widely and wisely about issues of well-being and energy, and that same wisdom is evident here. I especially like the way she offers both the "light" and "dark" faces of each archetype, reminding us that every one of the roles we play offers both constructive and destructive (or at least unhelpful) possibilities.

BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE, II: The question of distance

Once you've done the tagging task described in my earlier post, Between Past and Future/I, you might want to try this one as well. It works in the same room uses the same tags you put in place earlier.

This time, you're not focused on the question of past vs. future. Instead, you'll be looking at how far away in past or future each item is. Is the room or studio filled with things that representing meaning very far from today, or are most of its contents relatively closely linked to how you live, work and/or create today?

To explore this, go around the room and take off the tags on every item that represents a past six months or less before today or a future six months or less after today. In other words, you are removing the post-it tags from all items that definitely have been or will be used within six months of today. The word "definitely" is important here. Don't fudge.

The binder holding a manuscript you began and abandoned two years ago, books from college or graduate school, shells from a long-ago vacation, a stack of empty frames you've kept in case they might fit artworks as yet unpainted, a box of pastels you don't really like to use but spent good money for way back when, and ephemera you might use for collages of a type you're not making now would all fit into that category. Leave their post-its on.

Books you've referred to within the past couple of months, manuscripts of recent work, supplies for media you're currently working with, mementos received very recently, and stuff that is placed in some "way station" in the room but will soon be moving out...take the tags off all of these.

As you did after the first exercise, take a moment to step back once you've finished.

How have the numbers of post-its changed? A little, or a lot? If the room looks much the same, you probably tend to assign memories or usefulness to things for a very long time. If there are noticeably fewer sticky notes in view, you're likely a person who lets go of such meanings faster.

Has one color disappeared more than the other? My own personal tendency is to keep many more things I received in the the distant past than things I might need in the distant future. In contrast, my friend Denise is much more prone to keeping art supplies and materials that she might use someday. Neither tendency is better or worse than the other; it's just helpful to know which one leads to the most clutter for you.

Though I'm focusing on creative space here, this exercise is helping in things like closets too, helping give you an easy visual read on just how much you are hostaging the present against the distant past or future.

BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE, I: How much room does the present have?

Here's an interesting way to explore the whys and wherefores of a room or creative space that feels uncomfortably cluttered.

You'll need nothing more than two different-colored post-it pads of the super-sticky variety....a half-hour or so of uninterrupted time....

Choose one of your two post-it colors to represent things you are saving because they had meaning in the past (yesterday, or any day before that). These might be mementos, collectibles, finished artworks, or supplies for projects you are no longer working on.

The other color then represents things you are keeping in case you might need or want them in the future (tomorrow, or any day after that).

Move around the room or studio as quickly as possible, tagging each item you pass with either one or both colors.

Stop yourself when you notice that you are assigning judgments, feeling shame, trying to make decisions, or starting to move items around. None of those reactions are necessary right now; tell yourself you can always think about/do them later if you wish to. Just place as many post-its as you possibly can, as quickly as you possibly can.

When you've tagged most of the items in the room, step back and look around you, trying to keep an open heart and an open mind.

Does one color predominate over the other? That is, do you seem more prone to keeping mementos from the past, or hedges against the future?

How much room does the present seem to have?

Leave the notes in place and take a brief break. Give yourself some time to 'live with' whatever you've discovered.

MY FATHER'S BOOKS: a recollection

As part of the book clearing out I spoke of in my last blog post I reluctantly shed some of my late father's books. My dad, Saul Fox, was an avid reader. Indeed, most of the time he put my own more scattered reading habits to shame. Progressive in politics, idealistic in philosophy and eclectic in interests, he regularly took on monumental tomes, reading what seemed like a scant handful of pages on any given day yet finishing even the most demanding volume both quickly and thoughtfully.


He did not like to discard books—as he often admitted, he had a Depression mentality about such things. And so, when he died, his bookshelves held evidence of the reading of many decades. Some of the books I remember from my earliest childhood: To Kill a Mockingbird, Profiles in Courage, not one but two copies of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a book which I have attempted to read but never made it through.

From a few years later he owned A Thousand Days, The Death of a President, and a variety of other books on the Kennedys, though these were the exception to his usual save-it-forever rule; when John Kennedy's sexual exploits and role in Vietnam became public, Dad would have let those go had it not been for Mom's intercession. The Watergate years added a copy of Woodward and Bernstein's All the President's Men, as well as a variety of the gardening books he bought as he struggled with his first suburban yard (he was an apartment-house child) and built his own small greenhouse.

And so it went, each decade marked with its own thoughtful collection of titles. I'm sorry now that I did not make note of exactly what he was reading when he died in 2006 at the age of 81; that information would be interesting to me today, but it escaped me in the welter of emotions and tasks that follow a parent's death. I do remember that several books on the Iraq war were stacked on his "reading table" at that time, along with Haynes Johnson's The Age of Anxiety: From McCarthyism to Terrorism. I'm pleased to say that unlike The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, I did make it through Johnson's book, the intelligence and searching, almost searing approach of which seem entirely consistent with Dad's preferences and personality.

Dad's books are a deeply personal, deeply soulful part of his legacy, and it wasn't easy to release any of them. But a realistic assessment of space requirements in my home prevailed, shored up in moments of deepest doubt the image of my brother correctly asserting that he did not need physical possessions to remember Dad and Mom. I let go of some twenty books, keeping those titles that seemed most characteristic of his interests and values. It occurs to me, as I write this, that an even more soulful tribute to Dad than keeping his beloved books would be to read as frequently, passionately and persistently as he did...an inspiration from him that may not be a physical legacy, but is somehow an even more meaningful one.