A journal entry about nothing in particular.

It’s been awhile since I have posted a private journal entry here. So here is one from Friday because it’s as good as any other day. (Note: I did get my computer back from MacStation yesterday).

It is morning on the west coast, coffee, rain. I am yet without computer and so my notebook stands in. As though it does not occur to me to use paper anymore despite the existence of beautiful notebooks and pens that make writing an effortless practice to the cramped hand.

It is morning and I am here at my table, with a coffee and stack of opened mail – three stacks really – each to be dealt with in their own way. Also a pile of envelopes for recylcling. Today is errands upon returning including a stop at computer repair to drop off the ailing machine even though it may never come home again depending on the cost of the fix.

I brough new books home from Ottawa, shelved appropriately first thing this morning – poetry with poetry, the rest in the pile “to read”. It’s not that I don’t read the poetry books but they aren’t the same as the novels and essays. Novels and nonfiction, I read once through and then shelve, possibly coming back to them another time to re-read or lend away. Poetry never gets a complete once-read-through but instead is returned to over and over, picked and chosen through in quiet moments or read aloud to a friend, a lover. In that way a book of poems lasts a lifetime for it is always new each time the hand finds it on the shelf.

Brian and I now read to each other once at the end of each day – taking turns to surprise the other with selections from all over.

I am looking here at the books around me as I think about this and recognizing the need for greater shelf space which will only get worse when Brian and I move in together. But I am so totally in love with these books on the over-cramped shelves that I feel bound to keep them no matter how impractical. Is this a sign of hoarding behaviour in years to come? Is it harding if you keep things tidy and organized or only if they are over-flowing garbage bags and boxes and there is no longer a clear passageway throughout the house? I tend to be pretty organized – I am hoping that alone fends off the label of crazy. Of course flip side of one kind of crazy is the other – obsessive compulsion – or the freaksihly meticulous need to control things.

While hoarders allow chaos to reign and their belongings to dominate them, the OC seriously internalizes their own importance in keeping chaos of whatever kind (illness, mess, accidents) at bay. IN my family we have all kinds of crazy – but the obsessive stuff is definitely more present. I have my own marginal tendencies towards OC but the signs tend to be limited to door and oven-checking which are not the worst things one can do.

Mostly though I can keep it in check with regular sleep, good diet, exercise – the obvious preventative and antidote both.

Winter is pretty much here now after a clear and sunny fall – the rain outside giving more excuses to stay bundled in warm quilts and cloister. It’s what I love about the climate here – the several months in which you have the excuse to be a total shut-in if you so choose. I certainly always get out but having the weather as a convenient mea culpa for anti-social tendencies doesn’t hurt.