I have been dusting bookcases, which means going shelf by shelf: taking each book off in turn, dusting it, trying to part with at least one, and fitting them all back on. The fitting them back on is almost as difficult as trying to evict one. Sometimes, it’s because new books just got placed on top of others when they came into the house. Sometimes, it’s because I’m too generous in leaving space for new books that will arrive in the near future. I just gained a boatload of space, though, because I moved the two volumes of the Norton Anthology of English Literature and the two volumes of the Norton Anthology of American Literature elsewhere. (The English ones are in a semi-permanent new home on a shelf in the kitchen (surprisingly there was room on the Longaberger five-shelf stand that now holds mostly cookbooks), but the American ones are just in a holding pattern atop a cabinet in the family room. My reasons for keeping the monstrosities (altogether, they take up nearly a linear foot of shelf) are not very good: sentimental reasons and “just in case”. No matter. It will all shake out somehow.
What I have been fretting about is whether I’ll go to the gym tomorrow or wait until Friday evening, when a couple of my kids might go with me. I found myself going back and forth in my mind, and then simply told myself that such brain activity is a waste of time. I will go to the gym when I have my gym clothes on and get in the car to drive there.
Maybe to strengthen my resolve, I turned to something I copied down in my journal this morning:
Happiness is there if you know how to breathe and smile, because happiness can always be found in the present moment. Practicing meditation is to go back to the present moment in order to encounter the flower, the blue sky, the child. Happiness is available. —Thich Nhat Hanh in Peace is Every Step
So, contrary to J. Alfred Prufrock (certainly there in the second volume of the Norton Anthology of English Literature, and it’s probably abridged), there is time; there is time.
