In 2013 I almost died. Same thing in 2016. I’m 77. My Dear Companion says, “Those events made me a widow twelve-times over.”
During COVID I built a coffin that spooked my daughter. Fighting off fear, she built a mini-coffin, “My little coffin can checkmate your big coffin.” CBC, the Canadian public broadcaster, then commissioned us to make an animation-documentary called “Rockin’ the Coffin,” where father and daughter talk through our fears about each other’s deaths.
Before I retired in 2008, I gave away half my library. At first graduate students were eager to have their mentor’s books, but soon they would flee, “My mate will kill me if I come home with more boxes of books.”
Overbooked, we die.
Now I’m giving away the other half of the library. The books fill three rooms. My Dear Companion says we have to shrink our footprint. She’s game to try a laneway house in Toronto, but I prefer to die here in our big, brick box.
I’ve been labouring in the library for weeks now. For every 100 books I sort, 10 catch my eye, to set aside and keep. A student gave me that, I found it on the street, it was a bargain. Will I ever read the 10%? Probably not, but you don’t trash old friends. Books are people too.
A title seizes my attention. Common sense: trash it. Intuition: don’t let it go. Must be a message from the gods. Ah, there’s a title page: Double Bind, a sign of my dilemma. Keep that page. Rip it out. Where are my folders? They’re in the recycle bin. Where do I put the page now?
I resist. I’ll stay here until I die. The house is paid for. Why move? Carry me out in a toe-pincher coffin, head-first, boots on.
For my retirement in 2008, we held Grimesfest, a The Man Who Gave Himself Away celebration. I photocopied Gordon Shepard’s book. Gordon, you are dead. Sorry. I owe you for the copied book. I had to keep it. Couldn’t give it away. It’s my bedtime reading. I’ll record the book for my wife and two grown kids. After I’ve crossed over, they will want to listen to it, right? Or trash it? Burn it? Their choice.
At the Grimesfest celebration I gave away more stuff. Gave away my father’s boots. Gave away my PhD hood. Twelve years later, am still giving stuff away.
But books are the killers. I’ve tried to give away my library before. Each time a librarian was pleased, at first. Then came the refusals: no more shelf space, the books are yellowing (already rotting), marked up (bad example for students), your name is written in the front (bad example for students).
I tried to convince a librarian in California to take my library. Put my books in the archives alongside Joseph Campbell, James Hillman, Marion Woodman, Christine Downing.
I asked the librarian: Why not? My books are free. Just pay the shipping.
Answer: doctoral students hardly use the archives.
What do they use?
Same as you and me: Google, Wikipedia.
Who needs a paper archive?
Second-hand bookstores say, we can sell only three of your five hundred books. Take the rest home.
Now a library in Prague wants my entire library. They will pay for packing and shipping. Happy to have your markings and signatures, they say. Makes the collection worth something.
Oops, the library only wants what it wants.
Can we select?
No. I’m not doing that. All or nothing.
Just give us the titles, Dr. G., then we’ll pick out what we want.
No, I say, all or nothing.
Dumping books is more terrifying than building a coffin. Burning files is a killer too. They are full of photocopied articles and course notes, all marked up in green, red, and blue. Green, go. Red, stop. Blue, recycle.
Staples and paper clips are now rusted. One by one, I pull them out, and dump them in the blue box, for recycling.
I’m rusting. When will the wheels fall off? When will I be crunched into a smaller box? Will I recycle?
You once gave me a book called “Schooling as a Ritual Performance: towards a political economy of educational symbols and gestures,” 2nd ed. I keep it on my shelf next my Grimes library. The sentiment of generosity and encouragement never dies.
I am so grateful that you have always shared your life and talents with me over so many years academically and personally. Especially now that we are more isolated your writing and books and memories of adventures, academically and personally, are life sustaining. I often read the annotations you and P.W. recorded in my journals in ritual classes which prompted me to think in other directions, grow, explore, mature, accept, and understand life more widely. No one has shared life, ideas, talents, energy, feelings, experiences and learning with me as you have. I feel parented, taught, befriended and blessed by you. I am pleased that you have found a place for your library. How fortunate for them.
P.H.
Interesting. It’s a strange feeling that slowly settles into your thinking. Things that we once treasured, to be sold, given away, donated to Good Will. All the things that held worth and meaning become relegated to the big garage sale in the sky. It made me sad giving away my dress blues navy uniform after having my picture made wearing them. I had no emotional connection to the navy or the uniform so why did it bother me? Some day, i suppose i will need to give my collection of guitars away. Some to B. some to T., some to friends. AND someday those people with have to give those away.
D.G.
Yes I have a lot of books!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And several rooms for them and I think they have their own lives. Not easy to find them when I need to… And most of them I should read and but don’t find the time … and then there are also boxes of notes and articles, as well as notebooks. And I do write in my books: i don’t write a diary… but takes notes and when I am excited and/or inspired by the content of a book, I cover it with my impossible to read writing… So of course they become part of myself.
M.M.
I really did love this one very very much!!!!!
Thank you
M.M.
I always love reading what you write. Even this week I was reading your piece “Performance is currency in the deep worlds gift economy: an incantatory riff for a global medicine show.” Fantastic!
As you know I have a big library too and am already thinking of getting rid of many things. But each part of the library is a part of me who is not there anymore, so I keep the books fearing to lose the last memories of who I was once. But Buddhism is right in its call to impermanence and not grasping. When will I learn that?
So I would love to have a book that was read and loved by you. Can I get a gift from you? I can pay for the shipping. But I want a book that you would discard but instead a book you love so I can carry on the love you have and love it too. And then give it to my kids. But if not it’s all good.
On another note. This pandemic is bringing out my clown voice and I am creating a show, a theatrical show where the clown Gaia sees the disasters of the world and respond his way. For some time in the future. I am imagining it in my walks, a way to survive. I would love a phone conversation with you to receive your wisdom in how I should keep going about this creation. Would you have 10 minutes for me? If you can’t I surely understand.
Much gratitude for you,
C.C.