To Read or Not to Read
Ó 1997 C.M. Ralph
- Anonymous (Latin)
"Is there a book in your life?" Headline on a recent copy of a Writer's magazine. In all honesty, there must be at least 10,000 books in my life. They can be found on the floor, layered amongst my rumpled bedding, on top of the laundry hamper, all over my desk, stacked to overflowing on the night stand and dresser, scattered over the kitchen table, at least one on every chair in the house ... not to mention the over-burdened bookshelves.
Have I read all these books? Of course not! The equation is: The easier it is to obtain the book, the less likely one is to read it. Simple. To that end, there are innumerable organizations devoted to insuring that I always own too many unread books. One very famous Book Club springs to mind.
Now, this Book Club has it down to a science. They begin by offering me any 4 books, from a list of 200, for only one dollar each! But wait, there's more! In addition to this, I am not obliged to purchase anything else, ever! Wow, what a deal! Who can say 'no' to that? So I unwittingly send away for my 4 books and with them, for the next 6 months like clockwork, I receive in the mail my own -'You'd better fill this out and return it or you've bought another book'- package filled to overflowing with color glossy tear sheets describing the Best Buys in books. Now, this Club makes it clear from the beginning that if I don't buy anything after 6 months they will automatically cancel my membership. 'That's okay', I muse to myself, because I can be as meticulous as the next person. I will religiously pick through my junk mail for the next 6 months, carefully extract the certificate that is buried inside the package, check off the 'DO NOT SEND' box, and return it promptly. I would like to point out that they bury this certificate in the package in such a way that one must read through all the color glossy enticements in order to find it. Clever. Very clever.
But persistence will out, or so I thought. My 6 months ended last week. I was notified with a postcard, which I thought was rather anti-climatic in view of all the junk mail I had to sort through. But all good things must come to an end, and end this did.
Until today.
I went out to get the mail and lo and behold, there it was! An envelope with my name on it ... with an introductory offer not sent to everyone.
You guessed it.
Buy any 4 books for a dollar each ...
How could I refuse?
Then there are the books we buy for others. No, not as gifts, but so we can understand, impress, or relate better to other people in our lives. There is an entire industry built around our need to relate better to others and understand ourselves. Its books are found on every self-help and psychology shelf in every bookstore on earth. Especially here in the San Francisco Bay Area where the therapist to patient ratio is twenty to one.
I must admit, I own at least one book for every woman I've dated for more than 2 weeks. I keep these special books in a special cardboard box located in a special corner of my garage. It is a shrine of sorts, a silent requiem honoring poor choices and personal disasters.
Seriously, women in general and lesbians in particular have a veritable plethora of these books written specifically for them. How to be single, how to be married, how to be single and married at the same time, how to be alone, how to be with others. Women who love too much, women who do not love enough, women who don't have enough time to love, women who have too much time. Women in recovery, women who should be in recovery, how to be a partner of a woman in recovery. How to survive incredibly horrible things that have happened to you, how to be a partner of a woman who had incredibly horrible things happen to her. Exploring your sexuality, exploring our sexuality, exploring the neighbor’s sexuality. Childbirth, Parenting, PMS, Menopause, pausing for men. Meditations on sexuality, meditations on recovery, meditations for women who meditate too much. And let's not forget the inner child. Finding her, talking to her, healing her, setting her free, spanking her, taking her to the inner mall to go inner shopping. Plus there's the Goddess, can't forget her. The Goddess in each woman, every woman's Goddess, worshipping the Goddess, the history of the Goddess, the mythology behind the Goddess.
Speaking of the Goddess, I'd like to know if there is also a Goddess counterpart, a female version of Satan? . What would her name be? Satanette? The Deviless?
At any rate, it seems like a lot of material to cover. Especially if we are reading these books in order to find out how to deal with the myriad of issues and people that are encountered during the course of one lifetime. By the time we reach the end of our reading lists ... phhifft! It's over.
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