The time has come to pack most of my belongings.
As always, the process involves finding abandoned boxes from the street, passing by supermarkets to ask if you could get their spare boxes and perhaps even buying some boxes, perhaps, if I get reasonably priced ones from the internet (I am a yuppie, yea).
This time round however, I don’t know how long I’ll be gone for. So I’m getting rid of as much as I can which is not that much since I don’t like accumulating junk. I hate it when friends give me useless tidbits as much as I appreciate the gesture. Things that don’t have a function upset me. I have been less rigid on this ever since the discovery of belts as a way to accentuate the waist and make an outfit but still, useless things get on my nerves. So I don’t have many of those. I’ll sell or give away what I can: gadgets/furniture/useful things I won’t store but in any case the mass of my belongings and the biggest pain is my books.
I’ve began the process and six boxes later I’ve got a runny nose and red eyes from all the sneezing from the dust and I’m nowhere finished. I have been keeping the reminiscing and nostalgic affection to a minimum to speed things up. But this will be getting harder since I will have to pack those books I haven’t packed yet because I might read them in the time remaining or else I might take with me or else I never read and I ought to have and I don’t want to admit that it’s too late. Also, I need to pack all my philosophy books and having failed my research degree due to a major huge fuck–up that I haven’t understood out yet, well, I feel a bit weird about the packing.
But in any case, six boxes later and nowhere finished? This is a major pain the ass and I’m going to betray paper. I’m going digital. While my beloved books are hanging out in storage neglected and forgotten and unseen, I will have many books to choose from and they will not weigh more than .25 kilos. (Actually, I’m making this last figure up.) Moreover, I’ll be able to transfer .pdf’s and image files all on a portable devise and sit by the beach or a willow tree (perhaps a peach tree since I’ll be in China) and read away.
And my babies? My babies where shall I keep you? I don’t know how I feel about sending you off to Cyprus. You understand that don’t you my lovelies? My mum, bless her, she has thrown books away in past. I know it’s a shock. To throw away books. My dad hasn’t recovered yet. And I still sometimes think about my typewriter a white something that I used to write on struggling to hit the keys with my piggy fingers making faint marks that were hardly visible. It was a red ink tape I remember. I loved that typewriter. My mum got rid of it in my absence. But I digress.
My point, really, if i do have one is that whether I like it or not I am part of the digital revolution and more quickly than I anticipated the move (for I have been reluctant to make it) I will abandon my babies in Cyprus dreading their future with host parents who will not be as loving as I have been to them. And I will have a new first generation gadget to play with instead.
The book is dead. Long live the book.
