so i try not to peek. because when i look, i find. when i knock, the door opens to me. most of the time, i just set my gaze on the corner chair and pass the boxes unscathed. no books in hand that will overburden my overburdened shelves or end tables. the stacks of books around the apartment are mounting.
the danger with leaving boxes and boxes of books in texas, was nature abhoring a vacuum. sure we had to buy bookshelves and create a vacuum, but the abhorrence still applies. and i do vacuum pretty regularly now, but i've left my point.
so yesterday, i stop and look, knowing i won't find anything good. there are lots of old novels and some jewish history books, we live in a very large jewish community. many old text type books and on rare occasion, some poetry.
yesterday i found a mint condition selected keats. an old girl scout songbook, which my girl can use for piano practice, and a book on creating a personal retreat (very useful). the last lost soul was a book by eric hoffer, the passionate state of mind.
i open it to see if it is anything that would remotely interest me and this is what i read:
61
THE weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.
home run!
i'm rounding third and ready to slide, when i read:
60
THE fact seems to be that we are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about. The rabid radical remains in the dark concerning the nature of radicalism, and the religious concerning the nature of religion.
Vehemence is the expression of a blind effort to support and uphold something that can never stand on its own--something rootless, incoherent and incomplete. Whether it is our own meaningless self we are upholding or some doctrine devoid of evidence, we can do it only in a frenzy of faith.
yikes!
i've read that to my best friend and a potential best friend and both times it left my blood chilled.
i ask my well read friends,
have you heard of this guy?
no,they say.
neither have i. but he's got something to say.
the flyleaf indicates that he was a migrant farm worker, San Francisco longshoreman, then (or now, as the flyleaf says) one day a week researcher at UC Berkeley of all places. the man has known poverty, hunger, hardwork, ease, academia. he read everything he could get his hands on in german and english then contrasted it against his real world experience to come up with what i now hold in my sweet little hands. a gem.
so this is the kind of book, i'll nibble away at. i'll carry it with me everywhere and let the tender morsels feed me (good thing i found this book, i was beginning to think there was no next book for me. or i couldn't find it. little did i know it would be mine!). which is the perfect segue to he most recent passage i've been stumped by, on passion and pursuit. allow me:
3
THAT we pursue something passionately does not always mean that we really want it or have a special aptitude for it. Often, the thing we pursue most passionately is but a substitute for the one thing we really want and cannot have. It is usually safe to predict that the fulfillment of an excessively cherished desire is not likely to still our nagging anxiety.
In every passionate pursuit, the pursuit counts more than the object pursued.
wow.
i just have to let that soak in. but i'm running through a list of those things i've pursued that are not the thing i really want. they are mere carrot dangling before mine eys. perhaps my dream last night of lockingjaw pitbulls makes some sense now. i think i want it. i'm bred to want it, to function in a certain capacity, and when i find that thing, i sink my teeth into it, and don't let go until i kill it. how much i recognize this pattern. how much i want to change this pattern.
somewhere it is written, admitting you have a problem is the first step.
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