I hate to start a blog entry with a cliché (an action which itself seems like a cliché,or is the cliché to complain about the cliché… anyway) but sometimes it is important to stop and smell the roses. One of the many driving forces behind this massive exercise in reduction,reappraisal,and redefinition has been that there was just too…much…stuff…in my life to actually enjoy it all. More than just feeling overwhelmed by personal possessions;more than being terrified by the cumulative monetary investment;more than being worried that I wouldn’t be able to stop buying things. If the whole point in having these books,these things,was because I derived pleasure from them,than I needed to be able to find the time to have that experience. And when you have a pile of unread books,with more on the way,can you really say that you are.
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I was on “the internet” today and I learned about something today that I always innately understood but didn’t know that someone had put a name to it:Parkinson’s Law. To quote the anonymous scholars of Wikipedia “Parkinson’s Law is the adage first articulated by Cyril Northcote Parkinson as the first sentence of a humorous essay published in The Economist in 1955” It states “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” The article goes on to provide a variety of corollaries and further adages based on this Law,relating to everything from laws of supply and demand to computer science. One of these encapsulates the concept that had brought me to this page in the first pace:“Data expands to fill the space available for storage.” This is the concept,especially how it can relate to collecting and collectors,that I was trying to put into words. Day’s corollary to Parkinson’s Law:Collections expand to fill the space available to store them in. Continue reading Day’s Corollary;or,Filling The Space Available  My Parents Shelf Porn:Raw &Naked.In the basement of their new homes,new bookshelves laid out and waiting to be filled. Photo by John Day. I blame my parents. Sure,they thought raised me right,thought they tried to teach me the value of things,and thought they showed me wrong from right. But if your genes mean that you are predetermined to get high cholesterol or diabetes,then no matter what diet and exercise habits your parents raise you with,you will struggle with those diseases your entire life. So I look to my parents for the origins of my collecting habits. They did not push me down this path,but I see myself reflected in them. Or maybe I see them reflected in me. My parents met and married in the small town of Painesville,OH,marrying right out of college and producing me shortly thereafter. My father studied economics and became a high school teacher. My mother studied literature and became a librarian. My father read and loved science fiction. My mother had the literature and poetry that she read for school as well as mysteries that she read for pleasure. They raised me and my sister in post-Nixon America while struggling with a teachers salary and graduate school tuition. They did right by us,and for that I will always be thankful. I was never given everything I asked for,and I am very grateful for that. My habits of massive completeism and collectoritis were not their fault. What they did give me was a love of books and a mental image of a personal library. | ||||||
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