I love my Kindle. I love it that the books can be tucked away in there, hidden, like in a mind.
On the Innermost House page on Facebook the other day, we were thinking about the loud presence of objects (books, in this case) Here’s a link to what we said. It opens for me because I was logged in, but I’m not totally sure if it will take you there, though I think it will as it's a public page. In case not, let me quote what Diana Lorence told us:
. . . she says that as they slowly populated the house with their books the noise got so loud she could hardly hear herself think! If you can believe it she means the noise of all those personalities! That sounds like a fancy, but not if you really experience your books as living people. So Michael covered them. . .
I have exactly the same experience. For me, it’s as though every object is speaking, all the time. Every book on the shelf is speaking. Each item has a personality, an angle, an opinion. I fail to notice my own thoughts, and the whisper of the Spirit in my mind, when I am surrounded by such a cacophony of agendas. As the space clears, so does my mind, and I begin to be able really to think – to look deeply. And I believe “thinking” is one of the things I came here to do.
Part of my 365 strategy has involved moving onto a cleared shelf downstairs the books I have bought but not yet read, so may not wish to keep. On the garret shelves I have retained the books that (thus far at least) are important to me, that I know I would like to hold onto for now. Having the two categories on one shelf was very confusing, because the unread ones were restless and grumbling while the old favourites just sat there quietly humming their familiar tunes. It feels so much more peaceful with the grumblers downstairs. They are still grumbling but they live in the room where the family watches TV in the evening, and the agenda of the TV is so loud, insistent and dominant that it drives every other presence away from the campfire circle into the surrounding dark. Sometimes I use it for that on purpose, when my thinking is tortured and I need a refuge from it.
But with a Kindle, though it does whisper quietly about the books it hides inside, I find it a more restful companion than the loudly chatting regular books.
I just bought two new books for my Kindle, that I am so eager to read – they look just brilliant!
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Oh. Another small, feeble thing – but wait! These empty matchboxes represent a principle! Part of house-calming down to a simple, peace-inducing, clutter-free space involves (for me, anyway) seeing how many things can be reduced to the irreducible minimum. That sometimes means being visually unintrusive (like the amazing Bose wave player) while performing just as well as much larger bulkier things. Sometimes it means finding housewares that are two-in-one – a bowl that can double as a cup or as a plate, a sofa-bed, a stool that can also be an occasional table and is also a storage unit, for example. In this case, it meant taking three boxes of matches all one third full and decanting two of them into the third. Et voilà! Two items disposed of (went in the kindling pile). One might object, “Ah, but it’s much handier to have three boxes of matches dotted about in different places!!”
“So true!” she answers sweetly.
“So what?” she secretly thinks.