Getting rid of books
I have a tendency to compulsively donate, trash, compost, give, melt, etc. anything that is starting to cramp my space style. Like the opposite of a hoarder. I once threw away a return airplane ticket before I'd actually returned.
Books, however, are the one thing I hold neurotically onto, like worn out doudous whose mere presence, though tattered, covered in dust, content dated-to-the-point-of-being-odious, soothes me. They remind me of the person I was when I read them, or the person I wanted to be when I bought them, or the person I love/d who gave them to me.
But now we are moving and it is time to lighten my load. Facing our bookshelves and the triage that can no longer be avoided, I can't deny that it's time to amputate. Our departure is imminent, I no longer have time to decide what paperbacks still "spark joy" and just have to let that shit go.
It's way less fraught than I would have imagined. Maybe it's because this is a move that feels like a major shedding that makes it easier for me to part with boxes of novels, old editions, and scholarly texts whose spines no longer need my attention. Or vice versa.
Books, however, are the one thing I hold neurotically onto, like worn out doudous whose mere presence, though tattered, covered in dust, content dated-to-the-point-of-being-odious, soothes me. They remind me of the person I was when I read them, or the person I wanted to be when I bought them, or the person I love/d who gave them to me.
But now we are moving and it is time to lighten my load. Facing our bookshelves and the triage that can no longer be avoided, I can't deny that it's time to amputate. Our departure is imminent, I no longer have time to decide what paperbacks still "spark joy" and just have to let that shit go.
It's way less fraught than I would have imagined. Maybe it's because this is a move that feels like a major shedding that makes it easier for me to part with boxes of novels, old editions, and scholarly texts whose spines no longer need my attention. Or vice versa.
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