once there was a man who had too many books. He had books on motorcycle repair, books on fishing,...

once there was a man who had too many books.  He had books on motorcycle repair, books on fishing, books on 17th century monastic practices; there were books where the main characters were dukes and knights and warrior queens; books that took place in Ancient Egypt, & in outer-space, in the deep troubled logic of a human mind– books that had found its way to him over the course of a lifetime, adding small pieces to the great monument of his identity.  There were books given to him by ex-lovers, by friends, and his parents.  Books people thought he would love; or that would speak to him.  Some did and some did not.  But still he kept them because he saw his life as a totality of his experience.  But there were, as I said, too many books.  They crowded in around him until his thoughts lay like a web– spectral and oppressive.  So he gave them away, one at a time.  To friends and lovers and children.  Row by row and shelf by shelf, his library dwindling.  He made choices, cut out pieces of his flesh.  This is for you, world.  Take this and go with god. And soon he was down to one.  He looked at it alone on the shelf.  It was the book that he held the most dear of all other books.  It’d spoken to him the way some 17th century monks were spoken to.  He’d read it a long time ago and it seemed to make a lot of sense at the time.  On occasion he’d thumb it on the toilet, or waiting for the bus.  It was the kind of book that had meant a lot at one point, and the more of the world he let into his life, the more the book seemed to grow with him.  Sometimes he’d talk about it to total strangers and he’d find himself woefully unable to express the thing the book had lodged inside him.  The man took it into his hands.  He touched the cover, the pages;  the waveforms of a lifetime of moments collapsed into this single riffle along the edge of his thumb.  He took it under his arm and went into his closet.  Then he wrapped it around a jacket and stepped out into the world.