a soul to dig the hole much deeper

have you ever read Fahrenheit 451? i'm sure you have. it's a lovely, lovely, lyrical poem. bradbury is an amazing talent. in that book, books were not allowed. people were not encouraged to think for themselves nor to have new or revolutionary ideas flitting about in their minds. the rebels were those who had actually memorized a book. a man who had memorized The Jungle Book, say, would be from then on referred to by the name of The Jungle Book and would be consulted anytime someone wanted to know what was in that book. Maybe someday that's how things will be, in some sense. it's true that books are outmoded just like records and eight tracks and even VHS tapes and soon DVDs. the pace of culture is ever increasing. i was saying that is a good thing, but nothing is completely good or bad and we really have no way of knowing what the eventual outcome will be. I've always had a love of books. i thought of the library as my home away from home. i always felt safest there. it seemed to me like nothing could go wrong at the library. it was a magical place. i spent most of my time roaming the aisles that housed books on psychics, the afterlife, metaphysics, religion and psychology. it seems to make sense to me, now that i consider myself an anthropologist. but, i never knew that i wanted to be an anthropology major until only about a year ago. i'd been studying it for my own entertainment without really even knowing what to call that! once, when my house burned down, the newspaper asked me what possession i missed the most and i said that my books were irreplaceable. in a sense, a book is irreplaceable. they are very sentimental objects. i've never liked to think of myself as a sentimental person. but, i hadn't made a list of what books i had accumulated over the years. i saved a few that weren't too bad. two that survived the fire: The Way to Love by Anthony DeMello and The Meaning of Happiness by Alan Watts. even though the pages are a little krinkly and maybe there's some sooty spots-- those I couldn't just throw away.