07-04-2020, 10:46 AM | #11 |
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Before Marie Kondo came up with the "Does it spark joy?" criteria for whether to keep or throw something out, I was pruning my belongings for things that gave too much weight to my footprint.
I have always moved often, which was another motivating factor in trying to be conscious about what I hold on to. That said, I only allow myself to keep poetry and reference books. I buy three or four books of poetry a month and constantly go through my shelves, reassessing the impact of the books there. (I do the same with every other class of objects I own.) Recently I've been focusing on Black women poets. I'm reading Marilyn Nelson, Lynne Thompson and a recent anthology of the work of Pat Parker. I have a stack of poetry collections by my favorite reading chair and put narrow post-its on the pages with work that really gets to me, before I put them alphabetically on the shelf. I know this sounds very nerdy. But it feels good. When I was in grad school and lived with a lover, I came home once to find she had consolidated our libraries; alphabetized all our books together. I knew she meant it as a gesture of commitment to our shared home, but I had mixed feelings I'm like that Jill Clayburgh character who says, when her lover imagines their old age together, teeth in the same glass by the bed — "I want my own glass."
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