Tuesday, November 30, 2004

What Is In Your Underwear Drawer?

It’s been very interesting to see what is on everyone’s top shelf because for me it is like looking into someone's underwear drawer. It reveals who they are at their core and no two are the same. And there are ironies, like the 70 year old lady I stalked at Barnes and Noble who was buying Anais Nin or my favorite friend who has secret romance novels tucked behind her toliet.

For as long as I can remember I believed literature to be dangerous and if the adults in my life really knew this information they would rip the books right off my shelves. I mean in my small Baptist church no one else seemed to pay attention to how much the characters in the bible actually had sex except me.

So I have been slightly horrified and thrilled to see how freely people give the contents of their underwear drawer away and wondering how many people took a few or added a few books to the photo. (I know the complete works of Shakespeare are here if I dusted them off;)

But mostly my wonderment comes from what complex creatures we are and I say that with the knowledge that my Clan of the Cavebearers book is right next to Paul Celan. We need word. We need the diversity of word to survive and that means as much as we feel we are in competition with each other or that our voices are not necessary, they are.

Our poems are all in some universal underwear drawer in the sky and they are needed. At least that is what I think today.

3 comments:

Radish King said...

1 bottle of champagne
black cat fire crackers
underwear

Ivy said...

Och, the bookshelves are nothing. Pfft! What would be more revealing would be to show my bedside drawer reading stack of books.

early hours of sky said...

Rebecca, you forgot the handcuffs

Ivy, the fact that you know you have a bedside table means of course, you don't own enough books. Btw, I have everything Sarah Waters has ever written and we shared quite a few books from your list. Though I don't have your amazing book case...