A penny for your thoughts, your books for a penny.

It's an unmatchable winter day here. The sky is that soul-stretching blue that lets in all the vitamin D and lifts you about a half inch from the ground whenever you look up at it. I always this of one of the few of Frost's poems that had always "found" me:

Why make so much of fragmentary blue
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?
Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)--
Though some savants make earth include the sky;
And blue so far above us comes so high,
It only gives our wish for blue a whet.


Yep. It's my favourite colour, apologies to my greying pink teddy bear.

I feel funny today, not bad, just funny. It's such an odd time. I've been wearing myself thin with the silly Nutcracker costumes and work and the same old no-money thing. I feel like I could use a day or so of sleeping before I head out to North Carolina. When I get back to Cambridge, I'll be moving to the meetinghouse. I've met the roomates and picked out my room. (I think I'll be painting it blue, it's a dreadful yellow at the moment) The money panic will cease, for the first time in my life. I've learned to live a lot more simply but I still dribble money wherever I go. I've been reading old Quaker biographies where much is made of the account-books of Quakers, and also old Disciplines where the queries on money and money-handling go on for pages and pages. This is one little respect where I have a lot of room for Quakerly improvement.

I think there's some strange sort of rebellion in the bleeding of small amounts of money. I can scratch and howl for rent, and be within an inch of having the phone turned off, and still go buy a burrito when I've got rice and ramen and mac-and-cheese waiting for me in my cupboard. Or buy the pretty book in the window when I have hundreds at home and millions in the library. I think it's a dishonest way of tricking yourself into thinking you don't have to think about it. But you do have to think about it.

I sold some books today. I do not think I have ever, ever parted with a book before, unless I was giving it to a dear friend. But I am moving and need the room, and it's Christmas and I need the money. This morning I went through my bookshelf. Anything I would not read again, anything I'd put off reading for more than a year, anything that was not a classic or a reference or a sentimental treasure went into a pile. I made myself go over them several times, each time getting a little stricter. I loaded the 40 pounds of book into bags and staggered off to the subway, swaying under all the words hanging from my back. When I got to the bookstore, I felt hot and pale as the clerk looked at my little stacks and chose the ones he wanted. I felt vaugely guilty as I redeemed my little slip for $31.80, but it was good. It's always good to part with stuff. It was surprising. He took many of the books I didn't think he'd take, like a chewed up old terrible terrible Woody Allen book, yet another copy of Chocolat, my mildly ratty Brecht for Beginners, a creepy and haunting Japanese novel that kept me awake for weeks, and some bad science fiction, and didn't take any of the ones I thought he'd jump on...a mint copy of Memoirs of a Geisha and well-kept hardbacks of all the terrible Oprah's Book Club selectios I regularly rescue from boxes on sidewalks. I still have about 25 lbs of book here.

But at the end, I had $31.80 to add to my $1.79 balance in the bank. I was struck by how very relative money is. When I was five, a dollar was a nearly unimaginable treasure. When I was ten, it took five to make me feel rich. At fifteen, fifty dollars was a kingly sum. These days, when I'm feeling flush, I'll spend forty in a day on dinner, some beer, and a movie. When I am fishing for the quarters in the couch, $31.80 seems like a fortune.

It struck me that the early Quakers would be very displeased with this attitude. A dollar is a dollar is a dollar, and I shouldn't discriminate between them just because of the size of the group they're hanging out in.

I don't make very much money at all working my 20 hours a week, but when I am trading my time for rent, I'll have more at my immediate disposal than I ever have. I'm planning to pay off a few small older debts, finally catch up with the student loan, and save, and all that good stuff, but I also feel like this will be the time of all times to start handling my money like an adult--now that 95% won't automatically go into that old staying-alive game. The Quaker ladies of old kept a little notebook where they recorded all transactions down to a penny. These days, we've got budgeting systems and computer programs and all that stuff, and I'm going to get that started with that in the New Year. But I think I will start with a notebook. I think it's very interesting that I'm so squeamish about this...

Anyway, I hate money, but I love books. The homeless books I didn't sell will be "released into the wild" via the bookcrossing project. (urging you to commit random acts of literacy!)

A book is not only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold.

Henry Miller
The Books In My Life (1969)