Already Read 'Em, An Experiment

This is not my bookshelf. This is not my house. This is not my to be read pile. But it could be if I let it. Bibliophiles are a dangerous lot, always pulling in new books around us. We can't wait to read the next book, before we are even finished the current book.

There is a great scene/line in the remake of the movie "Cape Fear," where Max Cady (played by Robert De Niro) is getting out of prison. When he is sent to prison, he can't read. So Nick Nolte isn't worried about Cady realizing that he let him hang, so to speak. But Cady/De Niro teaches himself to read. And he reads like crazy. And figures shit out. And along the way he develops a collection of books, which he is leaving in his prison cell as he walks to be released. So he is walking out with the guards and another guard calls out:

"Hey Cady, what about your books?"

"Already read 'em."

The ultimate utilitarian. They have served their purpose. Later, bitches. A bibliophile, Cady is not.

There is a funny thing about my bookshelves and my books. I haven't already read them all. I'm a tangential reader--I'll have books lined up to read next and some stray thought from something I am reading runs me down a mental rabbit hole, I pick up a new book and the book that was next in line gets backburnered. Rinse, repeat.

So I own some kickass books that I haven't read. And it is time to read them. Because some of them are beyond classic. And they are already here, living with me, untapped.

Here is the experiment: no new books. No new books so that I get to, and stick to, reading some of what is here. My goal is to go for a year. That would be some shit. But I will try six months, and then take the experiment's pulse. The goal is not to read all of my unread books. That would take more than a year. The goal is to spend the next six months to a year reading only books I already own. No new books.

But it hardly limits my reading. I am a slow reader. I am not saying I will get through this list, or that I won't modify it by swapping out one book for another off the shelf. But with a little thought, here is what an opening salve:

Fiction

"Ulysses," James Joyce
"The Old Man and the Sea," Ernest Hemingway (haven't read since high school)
"Far Tortuga," Peter Matthiessen
"Cathedral," Raymond Carver (short stories, have read a few of them)
"The Once and Future King," T.H. White (have read part)
"V.," Thomas Pynchon

"The Sound and the Fury," William Faulkner

Non-Fiction

"The Spell of the Sensuous," David Abram
"The Poetics of Space," Gaston Bachelard
"Travels with Herodotus," Ryszard Kapuscinski
"Forests," Robert Pogue Harrison
"The Golden Bough," Sir James George Frazier

A formidable list. I am first finishing Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian," and Tony Horwitz's "Confederates in the Attic," before embarking, but buying no new books begins today, Sept. 15, 2014. Vegas odds aren't good that I can complete this experiment; that I won't cave like a book junkie and have a book binge, but I am going to give it a shot.

The book selling industry may feel a slight pinch. And I guess there are at least a couple reasons behind this experiment. One would be not spending money I don't have to spend, when the riches are already here. It frees up more cash for craft beer :)

But I think the bigger point is that reading isn't always about reading the next thing or the new thing. If your mind is actively engaging what it is encountering, and adding its own thoughts and depth, then the right stuff finds it and even more mundane reading (which this list is not) can turn into big stuff. Sometimes it is the reader, not the book. Books are the stimulus, not the result. You are the result, what you do with or from or because of the stimulus/book.

And that isn't to reduce books, literature, or art to just being stimuli. But that is in effect what it is. A painting is experienced by a viewer, a book by a reader, who reacts to it. Who takes it in. Who studies it. Who feels it. Who relates it to their own experience. And in that respect, art, to the viewer, the reader, the audience, is to be experienced, to stimulate us. To make us think; to make us cry; to make us laugh; to make us create; to make us question; to make us wonder; to make us love.

We have to change ourselves. I have to change myself. The lesson, perhaps, is to look at what is around me, the things I already have, rather than continually looking for new and next. And I am excited for the books that are here.

And why not start with a literary mountain to climb? Next up, Ulysses. Let's talk, JJ.

A Barn on Mulberry Street

I've always wanted a barn. It's one of those Eastern Shore landscapes aesthetics that inhabits me. Barns are churches, a symbol of rural ethics, a structure that says America.

But my barn would not be a haven for horses or cows. Hay would be at a minimum. I grew up with barns, but I also grew up with the Bat Cave. Not the Bat Cave to be a superhero, but the Bat Cave as man cave, as a place where you surround yourself with the things that make you, you. Things that inspire, motivate, elevate.

The walls of my barn would be transition so that I could navigate the floor and wall by skateboard. Along with barn architecture, skatepark architecture fills me with awe. It invites you to inhabit the space, and the world, differently. To create, to move, to experiment. And in my barn, in my world, motion, creativity and experimentation are paramount.

My barn would be a library and a writer's studio. I have no interest in spending time in a place where I am not surrounded by books and the lofty thoughts of those who have come before and along with me. Rather than a desk, the writing space would be a big open table, where pages can be spread out and imbibed together, a collage of thoughts and phrases, paragraphs and verses,

The barn as a temple. But not just a temple on the landscape, or a skatepark or a library, but also a temple for the body. I've always pictured the barn having gymnastics rings hanging from the ceiling, exposed beams, a rural jungle gym, to keep the body fit.

Oh yes, the barn. But living in town doesn't lend itself to having a barn.

Unless you live on Mulberry Street. On the way home, I saw a barn. But not an ordinary barn, this barn had a skatepark, and a library... it was a jungle gym. And Van Halen and Jane's Addiction and Dr. Dog were playing concerts there...

Source materials

I'm always digging for source materials. The foundation that holds someone or something up, or the clothespins that hang them/it on a line.

If a writer, musician, artist or athlete I am a fan of sheds light on inspirational source materials, I'm taking that walk. If it resonates, I'm starting the dig. So when I read that Jeff Tweedy pulled some fire from William Gass's "In the Heart of the Heart of the Country," I reached onto my bookshelf to dip back into a book I hadn't picked up in a while (Gass's "On Being Blue" occupies one of the strangest, but most coveted places on my bookshelf)

And when poet Gabrielle Calvocoressi cited Robert Pogue Harrison's "Forests," and then followed up by warning me, "it's so good it will melt your brain," well, I've gotta take that chance. That's the tangential nature of my reading, writing, music, etc. I'm frequently following a thread.

For a few years now, Wilco has been one of those source materials, artistically speaking, for me. A band I can't get enough of. And as mentioned last week, our nine-year-old daughter and I went to see them this past Sunday.

A no-duh-cartoon-brick-to-the-side-of-the-head realization is that, for me, the building blocks of my source materials are first-hand experience, more than books or music. And our girls are some of the source of the source materials. So here is a concert from a main band, with oldest daughter for her first concert. When you cross the streams of that many sources, what you have is a life moment. And it was. And Wilco delivered. And Anna and I both ate it up and levitated at the same time.

So for the moment, I'm soaking in and re-sorting the source materials. Listening to Wilco, reading Forests and Gass, and laughing and remembering with Anna.

Maybe I read

Maybe I read to think differently than I do. To introduce some thought or phrase or poem or character that wasn't there and becomes a catalyst to view the world other than it was.

Maybe I read to find someone else out there who thinks like I do. To connect or confirm that the shit transmigrating from my brain to soul and back isn't completely cracked.

Maybe I read for inspiration. To get smacked in the face or kissed or surprised by that one line or passage that seems seamlessly conceived and stretches the bar for me.

Maybe I read for diversion. To forget the bills, the trash, the commute, mortality, poverty, suffering. To escape. Temporarily

Maybe I read out of compulsion. Because I couldn't not. Because it seems like something is missing or awry if I don't have a book going or I'm not percolating with a magazine article.

Maybe it's all those things. Or maybe I just read.