Why books? Why *these* books?
The rain in Wassaic today precluded the ‘natural’ alarm clock I was hoping for with a flood of sunlight into the attic, but the sleep made up for the late night, and I still managed to finish the sorting job before lunchtime.
The large pile (to the left of the paper roll) are ‘clean’ books — those without marginalia or intentional page damage. In the centre, I have two piles of books with other people’s notes in, and to the right are books with my notes in — on inserts, on the page, with dog-ears… the method has every madness.
That complete, I thought it prudent to capture the things that had been swimming around in my brain whilst I moved books hither and thither. The thoughts group roughly as: initial shelving method; invitation to engage; all thoughts welcome! (misc — I caught details of the workshop Saturday and collections by professors/in relation to Olios); and special collections.
A produce run later and I’m back in the practical phase of space-making, trying to compensate for the adverse (inverse?) camber of the wooden floor, which slopes away from the wall and gives a dramatic lean to the bookcases.
Happy with the new shelf stability, I crack on with one of the sizeable records jobs — my plan being to note the provenance of every book. It’s slow going to record, for every book, what the reading status is (a majority unread, but Michael Simmons thinks that reflects well on my intelligence) and either where it came from or why it came into my possession. This feels important in the context of this being a library that serves a community — the connections between us are important, and that includes what happens when we pass things on, palm to palm.
Writing these annotations, a few thoughts surface. The first, and most obvious, is whether I’ll be done in time and how crucial this bit of the collection will be. Practical considerations both, and also at the mercy of re-prioritisation. The second, and more pervasive, is about my relationship to books — in general, of course — and to these books in particular. What does it mean to have shelves of books you haven’t read, especially in a spatially-cramped city like New York. Especially when you have the prospect of moving country looming.
The main feeling as I close up day two is that this project is so uniquely me: every book has a story attached, most of those stories involve people, almost every story is about a connection. Books in general, and these books in specific, are vessels that link ideas, cultures, peoples and selves. I’m really looking forward to opening hands, doors and covers and for these books to go on and make live connections beyond those imbued in them already.
