Stacks
I am comfortable with stacks. Books, papers, CDs, magazines. . .I like to stack things. Stacks are a handy resource for my kind of thinking. Paul Johnson described Ghaddafi really well in Modern Times; what did he write? I can answer that with a stack. I plan to make a copy of my music files for my boss shortly on that external storage drive. Keeping it handy - next to the desk - will remind me. There are some great Beatles CDs in there. A shredder, some fine reference books. . .I don't quote McClane often enough. . .I'll bet he has some great thoughts on autumn. Those newspapers should also be read soon.
I've written before that I have no formal office in this house. I work from a community desk. Ugh. Five children consume vast amounts of space even when two of them go to college. Once vacated an old office is seldom recovered. That has been my experience. My old office was in the basement and my precious books were all available for reading, reviewing, consulting and quoting. Today they are scattered on four levels of this house. There are bookshelves for long term storage but stacks next to the community desk contain the heavy rotation stuff: Mencken's book of quotations, Aristotle, Cicero, some Harrison, Paul Johnson, Sherlock Holmes stories, James Allen, Nicholas Bate, Michael Wade, short story collections from this summer's short story project. These are texts to revisit again and again for a phrase or description or even a fact or two. There are CDs from the attic. Randy Travis, Alan Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, The Beatles and some others I wanted to see and feel for a greatness inspection.
The stack pictured above is now ready for dispersal. It will be rebuilt but it is time for a clean up. It has been growing for some time and this evening it proved itself unmanageable as I looked for Pascal. I believe Pensees is at the bottom of one of those piles; it certainly isn't on the bookshelves in this house. And I wanted to read him tonight. Time to make the stacks accessible again. Tomorrow.
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