Information is Heavy, Part Two.

If you know me, you know that I am fairly well educated and fairly well-read; my husband is much the same. While his knowledge of the sociopolitical, historical, and Chinese medicinal is not only encyclopedic and inspiring, but also intimidating and rad, my own mental backlog is a more varied mish-mash of liberal arts and sciences, bordering dangerously close to both triviality and dilletantism. (?) Mainly, I can trot out such cocktail party stoppers as, “Did you know that the plural of octopus is actually ‘octopuses,’ and not ‘octopi?’ Why, yes, it comes from Greek, not Latin, and ‘pus’ is the suffix, referring to ‘foot’…” Riveting, I know.

I also really dig children’s books.

What these private factoids amount to in the physical world is that, together, our library is, well, for two people with essentially no other real possessions outside of a kick-ass music collection and some cool art, immense. I happen to know this because we have moved not once, not twice, but three times in the past year for reasons good, bad, and ugly, which means that I have not only personally greeted, sorted, dusted, flipped through, boxed, unboxed, categorized, and reshelved each of the books in my half of the collection, not to mention carried the boxes up and down steps, heaved them into trucks, vans, and U-hauls, and lifted with my knees not my back. I have invested so much personal energy into these books that I just smile when people who are helpig me move call it into question.

Have you read all of these?
Yes, mostly.
Why do you keep them if you’ve already read them? Can’t you sell them at Powell’s?

This is a good question – what are books for, if not to read? Once read, where is the value? Perhaps if I were into steamy bodice-ripping pirate romances, I’d be able to let a title go once I’d enjoyed the ride. There are only so many times you can thrill to the same smoldering innuendo – and where it leaves you at the end is relatively close to where you started, albeit a little more flushed and perhaps craving a cigarette. Although I appreciate fine naughty craftsmanship, the majority of our books are “about” things, or are journeys in and of themselves, and you can never go back again once the reading is done. Outside of brain trauma, experience is difficult to unlearn, either bodily or in the mind.

Some people, my husband included, read for information. They not only understand concepts and ideas, they store data. For them, reading is about the acquisition of new knowledge, and already-read books on the shelves serve as references for facts that have escaped the daily net.

Others of us read for shape. That is to say, the information is like a tidal surge, a scaffold, a bit of code. When I learn, I rarely recall data for long – dates, names, quotes – these things are not my strong suit. However, I learn to think, and each new piece of information pushes the shape of my brain, the mold I cast ideas in, the filter I sort through, the wildly erratic yet reliable function matrix that loops in and out of intuition and decision procedures to craft a somewhat predictable set of analytical tools, with which I pick at and probe and test and value what I may know of the world. I forget things, but I never go back to thinking about things the way I did before.

And sometimes, just sometimes, I begin to feel like an information monster, all gut and teeth and waving arms, crashing through the swamp and underbrush of sensory and historical experience, howling and snapping and devouring everything in its path without reason or taste. Reading, doing, saying, asserting, arguing. And I pause. This is my mind. How did I get to this place, this gesture, this clearing, this assumption? I do not know why I feel this particular way about fingertips, or why I like the word “cosmonaut” so much, or how it is I find the principle of complementary distribution in phonological inventories so elegant and pleasing, or why I like to imagine strangers’ faces as they were as infants in order to feel kinder towards them. And so, I return to my books. And there, among the patient spines and colors and word upon word upon word, I find a trail – a small dotted line wandering across a map full of territories that shift and realign themselves with every scrutiny. Books from college, from graduate school, from different cities, different friends, books from childhood, different selves. They help me trace the genealogy of thought as I’ve inherited and lived it – they remind me how I got here, how I continue to become who I am, how I better understand and continually forgive who I’ve been. I carry them from home to home, box to box, across oceans and back and up stairs and in bags and on bicycles, and that information is heavy. And it’s worth it.

~ by knifemaker on August 27, 2007.