Flotsam

It is remarkable to me that there were that many books that didn’t fit on our other three (large!) bookcases. At this rate of expansion, we will be living in an apartment with books carpeting the floors, a bed made of books, sofas and chairs made of books, and several stylish book-endtables within a few years.

I did try to do some pruning—here is my customary process of separating the wheat from the chaff:

1) Pick up surplus book (chaff).
2) Place in crate labeled “Storage.”
3) Snatch out again as from fiery pit of hell, car in process of falling off cliff, etc.
4) Open book at random and read 3-5 lines.
5) Devise chimerical lucrative essay I may be inspired to write based, in some nebulous manner, on said lines—or find some other way in which these words are indispensable to me.
6) Look at the books already deemed worthy of shelf space (wheat)—are there, among these, any that I could possibly do without, for even a small space of time?
7) No. No, there are not.
8) Tearfully, now, place chaff back in crate.
9) Repeat steps one through eight, with a different book, until all chaff is crated.
10) While carrying first crate to the door, notice the title of an exile—perhaps Doktor Snake’s Voodoo Spellbook (a facetious gift from my roommate after a particularly bad breakup). What if I need Dr. Snake’s instructions for the banishment of the Evil Eye? Instructions requiring only a bunch of bananas, some black ribbon, and a brief incantation?
11) Repeat steps four through six.

Every choice for me is Sophie’s. Force me to select a spatula and I will pick one, change my mind, take another, and watch as the jilted implement seems to droop its slotted head and curl its thin, plastic shoulders. Lighters that have long since run out of fluid I find to be disposable in name only. I have boxes and envelopes of small, slightly gruesome souvenirs: the shriveled top of a strawberry, a waxily matted button of birthday candle, a brittle Swedish Fish of unknown vintage—it’s just the sort of girl I am, I suppose. And my books keep me on the shortest leash. They are my friends and advisors; I have never traveled overnight with an entourage of fewer than four volumes.
But this apartment isn’t big enough for all of us. Some of us will have to move into storage, and it won’t be the one who’s paying the rent.