On Words, Time, and Being Mortal

Or, I moved my desk this week.

I spent the better part of New Year’s Day rearranging my workspace. It was a spur-of-the-moment compulsion, certainly not intended as some grand gesture of renewal. But I suspect that’s what I was after.

This is my third configuration since landing in this apartment. It feels like at least as many lifetimes have passed since that initial unboxing of possessions. Who would’ve thought, I think, remembering the shape of life back then. Who would’ve thought.

My desk now floats near the center of the room, away from the drafty window and spitting radiator that provided a welcome excuse prevented me from sitting there before. “Like a corporate executive!” I proclaim and then laugh, as nothing could be further from my reality.

One would not expect it to take an entire day to move one chair and one console-table-turned-desk approximately eight feet, but it did. Because of the books. There were dozens (hundreds? I didn’t dare count) scattered all over the room, in neat stacks and toppling piles. Heaps of books with well-worn spines and others yet-to-be-cracked.

“Have you read them all?” people ask, if ever they come over. “Not all, but most,” I reply. I suspect this will always be true.

When my mom got sick, she developed a new hobby: Goodreads giveaways. She entered seemingly all of them. “I won a new book!” became a regular refrain. They formed piles on the dining table, spanning every imaginable genre and category. Memoirs and business books and romance novels with covers that made me gasp. “Look what I won!” she’d say, gesturing to her spoils whenever I came to visit. I suspect the books provided something in short supply: they made her feel lucky.

I once read that the buying and collecting of books is actually about mortality. When we bring a book into our possession, it’s not merely about the words and worlds contained therein, but the time it will take to read them — time we assume we will have. The article insinuated that purchasing books is an exercise in avoidance.

Put another way, it is also a small act of hope.

This morning I made my regular pilgrimage to the mean barista. (Who is no longer mean, but actually rather chatty. Dare I say we’re becoming friends? A story for another time.) He is making a concerted effort to read more, he tells me, to rebel against the screens that vie for our every waking moment. He sighs. It’s often a losing battle.

There is so much to read, we agree. So many words and limited moments in which to consume them. Despite our best efforts, we may never accomplish all we set out to do. But, he says, with an optimist’s smile, we can do our best.

I schlep the book piles to and fro, thinking so many thoughts. If books represent our desire to evade mortality, they also prove our ability to transcend it. To connect with Jane Austen or James Baldwin over our afternoon tea. To see our own selves reflected back to us, across space and time.

If book buying is an act of avoidance, then surely, so is writing (or, as the case may be, not writing). I procrastinate for many reasons — to put off discomfort, because in that moment I truly believe the laundry is a higher priority, but mainly, because I hope to have the chance to do it later. I long to create from some other hour, some other vantage point, when I am undoubtedly wiser. After more adventures to be had.

And then, I can almost swear the books answer: There is no time like the present.

For now, my new desk arrangement seems to be working. I sit, pen in hand, books gazing on with encouragement. “Alright,” I say, to whomever may be listening, “How shall we fill this day?”

From whence I write.

---

Thank you so much for being here and rolling with me during this time.

As a token of my appreciation, I am giving all current paid subscribers a comp month, beginning today. (If you have an annual subscription, it will extend it by 30 days, free of charge. If you have a monthly subscription, it will add another 30 days before your next billing cycle.)

I know some of you will say it’s not about frequency and you are happy to support, and I love you for that! But trust that this is a gift for me as much as for you.

Thanks again for being a part of this community, and for keeping this space going. ❤️ You all are the absolute f*cking best.