Beltane                                                                  Summer Moon

Just wound to a halt today. Got out early and sprayed the orchard and the gooseberries. Then back inside for a break, but the Sunday slows got to me. Kate, too. We ate chicken wings, watched tv, basically did nothing constructive. (Kate went to the grocery store for a few things.)

Here’s a heretical thought (for me) that keeps pressing forward as we ready ourselves for the move. What if accomplishing things just doesn’t matter? Here’s where it comes from. So, we pitch lots of things we gathered in anticipation of this project or that. The hydroponics would let us start our own seedlings. The long arm quilter would let Kate do the expensive quilting work at home. Or all those categories of books that I’m now readying for sale or donation, no longer useful, in fact, if I’m honest, some never useful.

This process of pruning, of decluttering and deacquisition suggests flaws in the original gathering of things. Or, at the very least it shows a pattern of fluctuating priorities, changed emphases. Now, none of this is particularly surprising. Over a life things come and go as important, rise to significance, then fade away.

Astronomy is a good example for me. I spent time outside at night, joined the Minnesota Astronomy club, read a lot of books, saw a lot of stars and other celestial objects. Then, when I realized it would always require staying up late at night, I began to pull back.

But. What it may suggest more generally is what I actually suspect. Nothing matters. No achievement or set of achievements. No successes or lack of successes. Publication or not in the instance of writing. This may go to the core of my strange Intensive Journal insight: when I retreat, I advance. This sounds and feels much like Taoism. I’m not saying Taoism underwrites it or makes it valid, rather I’m saying this personal realization has a Taoist quality.

Alan Watts describes Taoism as the watercourse way. That is, our life can flow as water does when it runs down hill. It can flow around obstacles, carve out channels while continuing to flow, rise over obstacles, all without intention. If we follow the path of chi in our life, our days will flow like water.

This seems so counter-intuitive to the American way of upward mobility, Horatio Alger, keeping at things until the purpose is achieved. My way for most of my life. But, my life has gone on when achieving went very well and when achieving did not go very well. Was the quality of my life really different at either time? My moods changed with whether I felt I’d met the standard or not, so my attitude toward my life altered, but did the onward flow of my life cease? Was it obstructed in any way? No. I got older. I got up in the morning, went to sleep at night. Ate meals, laughed with friends, loved my family and the dogs. Either way, succeeding or not.

I’m trying to find my way here between the Scylla of accomplishment and the Charybdis of failure. In fact, in that very myth, the element that flowed between them was. Water.

It may be that I’m setting myself up for a big, big retreat.

Beltane                                                                 Summer Moon

Books. Down to here, down to there, down to where the shelves stop growing at the floor. Ah, my pleasure, my curse. Books. I don’t love books, though you’d be hard pressed to guess that if you looked at the lower level of our house. What I love is in books: knowledge, far away places, imagined worlds, the history of whole nations and peoples, the latest consensus on water or global warming or spirituality. Yet now I have to prune and, oddly, I’m looking forward to it.

I’ve collected books over the years as various projects have sprouted, become possibility. Some involved writing, but many, too, involved coming to understand some aspect of the world or a particular country’s literature or art. Or religion. Or political philosophy. Or just plain philosophy. The Enlightenment. Celtic history and myth. Northern European mythology. Fairy tales. Poetry. The Middle Ages. The Renaissance. Ovid.

It’s no subtle insight to say I have gone too far in my purchases, though if I had a Victorian library with plenty of shelf space, I’d keep them all. Just in case. This book buying habit started long ago, perhaps when I first bought all the James Bond novels in paperback so I could read through them. I was in junior high.

Since then if I develop an enthusiasm, my first instinct is to collect books about it. And I’ve been at it a long time. As a rough estimate, I have 308 linear feet of book shelves. You might call them my large array, my antenna seeking out the pattern in messages from the past, about the future and from the minds of artists of all ages and types.

This post is to aid in my deacquisition process. First off the middle ages. Then, the humid east gardening books, almost all of my books related to the bible and spirituality. All fiction save for the classics. My books related to psychotherapy, Islam, Japan. Books relating to political science and political philosophy. Egypt. Almost all of the DVD’s. All of the teaching company courses. Most books on magic. Certain art books like all those related to native american art, perhaps some of the very heavy coffee table books.  All of my notes for touring at the MIA. All of my notes for my book on the ecological history of Lake Superior. Perhaps most of the books gathered for that project.

Oh. My. This. Will be hard and will be freeing. Must be done. Here we go.