A Consideration of Some Clutter

Preparing for the Easter Holiday, Tresca separated the books littering the coffee table into "his" and "her's" piles. This morning I scooped up my stack of titles and deposited it on my desk.

Scanning the spines I see an inventory of my recent obsessions. Several titles concern what might be called "Men's Issues." There is "The Hidden Spirituality of Men" by Matthew Fox, and because I enjoyed that book I picked up another volume by Fox--not specifically related to the genre-- called "The Reinvention of Work." Having never read Robert Bly's pioneering volume "Iron John" I picked it up for a bargain basement price. Echoing the mytho-poetic focus of those books is Moore and Gillette's explication of male archetypes entitled "King Warrior Magician Lover." A slim volume with the off-putting title of "The Way of the Superior Man" by David Deida peeks out from this tower of words contributing a scant half-inch to the height of the pile.

Foundational to this monolith is Ralph Freedman's inches thick biography of Rilke entitled "Life of a Poet Rainer Maria Rilke." Periodically bogged down by the poet's somewhat suffocating humanity, I added "The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke" to my considerations, and, as always when I read his work, I rediscover divinity! Cheek by jowl, W.S. Merwin's recent title "The Shadow of Sirius" sits quiet as mist and as light as sunshine.

Topping this spire is a recent purchase I first heard of while reading Chris Hedge's brillant book "War is a Force that Give Us Meaning", "On Killing; The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society" by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman.

The as yet unread book "The Taming of the American Crowd" by Al Sandine spans time from stamp riots to shopping sprees.

And more a pamphlet than a book is Marshall Rosenberg's "Practical Spirituality."

No doubt as Spring merges into Summer my interests will shift and other volumes will contribute to the clutter on my desk and to the lived in look of my home. As yet, I am too restless in the seasonal novelty of warmth and light to apply myself in a disciplined way to the array of topics that catch my attention. And then there are writing projects related however tangentially to these books that disturb my cozy, addled, sun-soaked satisfaction...