It is not that I worry much. To my knowledge, I have only missed one deadline and that was out of the shear silliness of retiring. I failed to recognize that time had taken on a new rhythm. Missing the deadline was more confusion than delinquency. But I am in the rhythm now. I do not need to be inspired to write, just focused. I need to give my mind permission to roam. And that is what it is doing as I write this — roaming.
For reasons unknown to me, one of our two bedrooms has been deemed mine. I do not sleep there but use the closet and most of the shelves in the floor-to-ceiling bookcases that line one wall. It is my library.
The books on the shelves reflect my interests, some as far back as high school. There are many stories of small sailboat adventurers. There are health related books including chiropractic, homeopathic, acupuncture, osteopathy, and mainstream medicine. There are probably more books than I need on bread and wine, and of course, there are the books about Japan. These cover poetry, architecture, art, history, and chanoyu, the tea ceremony.
Most of the books were collected before the Internet and many have been with me for fifty years. Some of them took years of searching in one used bookstore after another. Nowadays the Internet provides an efficient but much less fun search. To find a book after years of searching is like discovering a golden nugget.
The used bookstores are owned by some of the most colorful people I have met, and most have an aloof but beloved cat lurking in the stacks. A well run used bookstore offers possibilities that unlike Amazon are not driven by algorithms but rather by chance. I never know what new interest will be kindled (pardon the pun) as I comb through the rows of books.
My library feels like these bookstores. The books are loosely organized into topics but there are outliers. I am literally on my toes when searching for a specific title. It is a good stretching exercise. As I look over the titles, many that I have never gotten around to reading, a new passion for the topic flares. I have to concentrate not to get distracted from the task.
So, when I am writing and need to do research, I can walk the few feet to my library. I rely on my paperbound resources more than Wikipedia, and have developed long relationships with many of the books. I trust them. Their presence is comforting.
I have a suggestion for this years graduating class, despite the sexiness of electronic gadgets, start your own “brick and mortar” library. Become familiar with it. Take joy in the books even as you pack and unpack them for the umpteenth move. Fill them with notes, highlight them, make them dog-eared; make them your own.
A personal library can be an inspiration, and a good tool whether rushing to make a deadline or when inspired to write late on a Monday night.
May 2016
