shit show

 Welcome to the I-have-too-much-shit-show. It's the solstice, and time for the off-with-the-old-on-with-the-new thing. Yes, the whole past year (and longer!) has been a shit show, and I'm ready to be done with all that. But I personally have some baggage to unload as well. I'm not a Marie Kondo minimalist, as you know, but with three housesful of possessions, I have too much shit. Especially books. I clear out my houses on a regular basis—every summer—but the New York apartment, my home, is increasingly crowded. 

And nobody wants my books. You can't give them away any more—not to libraries, old book stores or even vendors on the street. I have some wonderful books, but why? Am I going to look up something in Madam Bovary or reread Raymond Chandler? Do I need a picture book with aerial views of the Earth? I can't bear to part with my Robin Hoods or my father's Tarzans or the Vassar Girls Abroad series just yet. Or my tattered first edition of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. (Come to think of it, shouldn't that be kool-ADE?) But I don't need the paperback version. And of course I will keep my Chien-Chi Chang and Donna Ferrato collections. And those of other friends. (Maybe not Lynn Johnson's old Geographics.) So shit is going down to the laundry room in the building, where there's a giveaway bookshelf. 

I started in Hannah's old room, where the shelves haven't been cleaned in so long that I found some bud hidden in the back of one row of books. You could tell that it has been there probably since Hannah was in high school 20 years ago, because it was in a film canister. Remember those? So here goes. Clearing space for light and lightness and new growth. Hopefully not of collections.