Here's to you, Henry Miller

I woke up early this morning, around 4:30. I was soon joined by my feline companion. Her purr seemed to fill the room; it rumbled from my knees up the single sheet. We stayed in bed until shortly before 5, when my bladder became especially insistent.

From that point on, I followed my regular routine. Restroom. Duck into study, to turn on the computer. Pad into kitchen, to start water boiling for green tea. Shower & shave. Dress. Feed the feline. Eat breakfast. Wash dishes. Carry cuppa tea back to my cave/study.

I dispensed with my e-mails, up-dated the Ordinary Time book blog, reviewed a few of my favorite blogs. That took, maybe 15 minutes. Thought I'd play with the Library Thing site for a bit.

This last is a service which allows a user to catalogue all the books in their library. One may record up to 200 books, for free. I've entered a small fraction of my physical library, and I'm already up to a little over 100 books.

I could be methodical about this process, and enter information beginning with the bookshelf closest to the door (the north wall of the cave). This shelf features my poetry collection.

But that's not the methodology I've chosen. Instead, I've entered titles associated with some of my favorite authors: Neil Gaiman, C.S. Lewis, Diane Wakoski, Philip K. Dick, and Henry Miller.

A glance at that final page suggests that I have the largest number of Henry Miller titles (19) of those who have entered their collection into this service.

This fixation on particular authors (and Twain will soon be added to that list) seems a variation of that old alcoholic dictum: if one is good, one hundred must be even better.

It felt good to simply handle the books by Henry Miller again. I was introduced to his writing the summer after I graduated from high school. Gary especially enjoyed the sexy bits of Tropic of Cancer.

I bought my copies of Cancer and Capricorn from a second-hand bookshop. Somehow that seems appropriate. The man who would become Dr. Omed gave me a hard-bound edition of Black Spring.

I set myself the goal of reading the Rosy Crucifixion in one summer. This was a trilogy, similar to the Obelisk Trilogy (the two Cancers and Black Spring); each book was over 300 pages. I was working full time for the Infernal Bookstore, so it was the perfect thing to read. Where I had the "Infernal Bookstore," he had the "Cosmogogic Telegraph Company".

Toward the end of his life, Miller wrote a small book titled My Bike and Other Friends. It's part of my collection. I suppose my equivalent of that would be My Books & Other Friends. Each author has his or her individual voice. Henry Miller's is a distinctive voice I return to again and again.

He's a good, if outsized, companion.