Intermission
a creative coffee break from writing the play

Friday we left a carload of books with the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library donation center. Books I loved yet felt unnecessary to move across country. I believe it is important to donate things that are loved and wanted and still of use. I am often startled to see the stuff, and that is using the word kindly because I really mean trash, people give to charity. If it’s broken, smashed, torn up, how can these items be of any use? To me, it’s tantamount to treating non-profits as a dump. I come from poverty. Trust me, there’s a difference between trash and something well used.

Ah well, as a friend of mine says, I digress. I really meant to write about my book collection à la some recent posts on Gasp!.

This is the forth purge my book collection has endured. The first purge circa 1983-84 was unplanned, and the details uncertain. What I know is I was drunk, moving across town, and in the process, I abandoned a Fatal Attraction-like roommate who looked remarkably like Glenn Close, and, sadly, several hundred books in my care. A time of shame and pain. I still reach for some of those books, only to remember why they are no longer on the shelf.

The second purge was much smaller, and more sober. I hadn’t had a drink in three years, which would place us around 1988. A friend in recovery had discovered the joys of selling books at flea markets, and I donated my psychology collection of some eighty books to her cause. It was more about shedding some old parts of myself, than it was about being altruistic in helping her. For a long time after that, I would go to the book shelf and look for a particular book, only to remember I had given them away; the repeated nightmare of the book-hoarder, uh, book-lover.)

The third purge was seven years ago when I moved into my current home. I don’t even remember which books I gave away or sold. I was determined to move into this house with only things I truly loved, and so everything in my life I didn’t love was shed. There was quite a lot of "stuff" that did not move with me.

As we prepare to move across country, it was time again to check the shelves. I was shocked by how many books about writing I still had. I let them go. (Okay, I kept five of them.) I let go my beloved Edward Gorey collection, too. Most of what I let go was fiction. I decided if I was keeping books just to keep them, they probably needed to go. If I didn’t know anyone personally who would love them as I did, they probably needed to go. It was tough, yet felt necessary. There are always more books coming in.

The books that remain serve various purposes. Some contain research material for current, and future projects. Some I can’t bear to part with, irrationally, such as Harold and the Purple Crayon. I have very few fiction books. As I go along, I read less and less fiction, and what I read is either given to me, or written by someone I know. Fiction requires losing myself into someone else’s world, which can be enjoyable and even expansive, yet can take away from my own creativity. I find inspiration in non-fiction and choose to spend most of my time there.

The shelves are currently divided as follows:

• a small poetry section that is many years old; alongside the few novels I retain
• death and grief
• mythology
• spirituality
• William Butler Yeats poetry, plays, biographies and related material
• disasters, including earthquakes, viral, environmental, and "man-made"
• the human brain, which includes books about brain traumas, and language disorders
• dictionaries of all kinds, books about words, idioms, language
• plays and playwrights
• Radclyffe Hall novels, biographies, and related material
• the paranormal
• the Catholic Left

There was a time I felt getting rid of books was sacrilegious. Sure, sometimes I’m looking for a book that’s no longer under my roof. Yet, the need to keep books, as well as things in general, just because I can is nearly gone. Maybe I’ve spent too much time digging out the homes of friends now gone.

I’m off for a week to see a showcase of one of my plays. The box project packed as carry-on.

Cheers.

A box for each character in  the play is complete. Plus two extra, each representing an overview of the play. It was a fascinating exercise  for me, helpful in reminding me what I intended on a visceral level for the characters, who I created more than a couple of years ago. I’m not sure I will do such a detailed ‘boxing’ again. Trust me, I’m not “crafty,” and Mod Podge can make almost anything look good. I’ll continue to create my initial box at the start of a new play, because, well, it stimulates my creativity.

There’s an awful lot going on right now in my life. All good stuff, yet consuming. The Beloved and I are talking about moving from San Francisco. More than talking, actually. Planning. This morning, the idea seems sacrilegious…the morning sky is clear, the air crisp, the hummingbirds drinking from the backyard fountain. A perfect, calm moment in time, standing in the yard.

As I purge the house of stuff we don’t want to move, make job contacts, look at housing, blah blah blah, I try to focus on the new play, and prepare for the upcoming showcase of another. At times it helps to have something nonverbal, yet creative, to concentrate on, and so I’ve been working on my “box project” in between everything else.

One of my rituals when I begin a new play is to create a multi-dimensional representation of what I want to create on the page. I take containers in various sizes, shapes and, sometimes, practicality, and using collage, create an essence of what the play is about. I have a couple of small cartons of images of I’ve collected, and clippings of words and phrases that I use to collage with. Sometimes the finished box corresponds very well to the finished play. Often, it represents only the an earlier evolution of it. I began creating boxes about four years ago, and I’ve found it a very helpful tool.

The current play I’m writing concerns some people who run a restaurant. The box for this play, as an example, is an old “Republic of Tea” tin can, and the images are mostly of food and people cooking. Although there is very little cooking and food in the play itself, the box evokes an emotion for me that reminds me of what I’m writing about. It sits on my writing desk, and won’t be retired until well after I finish writing the play.

Working on the box gives certain parts of my brain a rest, while other parts get to play, in a relaxed way, with the themes, characters, or setting of the story. In looking forward to the upcoming reading,
I’ve been making several boxes, each one representing a character in the play. I like to give gifts to actors, and I’m thinking these might make a cool gift, providing they contain chocolate or something edible.