Saturday, February 25, 2006

The Booksale

The annual "Friend of the Library Sale" is this weekend. For a book lover, this event is somewhere between nirvana and an opium den.

It's been a long time since I've gone. In fact, it was when I was living in Norman and Dr. Omed was living in a hovel in OKC. I think. We went together.

I remembered it as being a pleasant experience, and have been wanting to go again.

I forgot one itsy bitsy detail: it would be crowded.

Very crowded.

And I don't like crowds.

I'm not agoraphobic, necessarily (lit., fear of the market place). I just have an overly-well defined sense of personal space, and it seems exceptionally easy for it to feel invaded.

And since the primary reality I know is my perception of reality, I assume other folk have the same amount of personal space. And I try to respect it. Golden rule and all that, you know.

So, now and again, there'd be a group of people at each of the aisle, such that I would have to squeeze through them to get out. I'd often feel trapped.

Or I'd have to squeeze in to get a decent squinty look at the titles.

I lasted for about 45 minutes before the anxiety over-came my biblophilia (love of books).

So - what did I get? Six books in all - three hardbacks and three paperbacks.
  1. Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?
  2. Rilke, Duino Elegies, trans. by Leishman & Spender
  3. Thinking Passover by Rabbi Ben Kamin
  4. And Still the Rivers Run by Angie Debo
  5. Alan Watts' The Way of Zen; and
  6. Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen.
I shared this list with Spideygirl earlier this evening, and she commented that I have very eclectic tastes.

Well, let's see - Jewish, Native American, Zen, a book of poetry, and a two light books.

Seems normal to me. Let's take the oddest ones in order:

1. Jewish
Our family joined the Episcopal Church when Padre remarried, around 1966 or 67. I was 12 or 13. We eventually joined St. John's, where Fr. Connolly (the beloved) was rector. It was the 2nd or 3rd year we were there that the church held a seder meal during Holy Week.

That's probably when I had the teen-age version of a Western satori: Jesus was Jewish.

Mind you, this was before Bishop Spong. Bishop Pike, of California, had been saying similar things, but most people had dismissed him as crazy by then.

So, I became very interested in Jewish thought. Padre was acquainted with the Rabbi, and got me a booklet about Jewish festivals.

I've been reading Jewish texts ever since. I love the Rabbi Small mysteries, I love Elie Wiesel's books (especially Souls on Fire).

2. Native American
The word "Oklahoma" means something like "land of the red man". We can't quite escape the fact that this state served as an early version of Guatanamo back in the 1800s. Nor can we escape the treaty which promised the territory to folk we forcibly relocated here "so long as the grass grows and the rivers flow".

By the late 1800s, folk decided us white folk needed that grass and those rivers more than the red folk, and we boomed in.

Angie Debo, one of the first female historians, wrote the seminal text on this betrayal. She was also born in Oklahoma.

Obviously, I know the general story. I think it's past time for me to learn the rest.

3. Zen Buddism
This also began when I was a teenager. The local PBS station aired a program with Alan Watts titled, "Conversation With Myself". All it was, was Watts talking about Zen. For thirty minutes.

I was enraptured.

Sometime after that, I bought his book of essays, This Is It. In it was an essay about the Beats (Watts did not care for their interpretation of Zen or Buddhism). Which got me to reading Kerouac.

See how my mind works?

I've read several of Watts' other books on Zen. I especially like his last book, Tao: The Watercourse Way.

His work has inspired a life-long interest in Zen and Buddhism.
Post #1431

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