porch blogging on Saturday

I love Saturdays.

So does Simon. As long as Mommy is home and sprawled out in bed, he asks nothing more from life. Well, he asks Mommy to feed him at quite early hours, but as soon as that's done and I've burrowed back under the covers, he will curl up next to me for hours, radiating feline contentment. (I call him Saturday Simon in those moments.)

This morning it's some brief blogging and journaling on the porch, sipping my outrageously strong coffee (Meg and Phillip, non-coffee drinkers -- what is it with most of my most beloved people shunning coffee and hating cats? -- spent a lot of time last weekend wrinkling their noses at the strength of the scent wafting out of my travel French press, which seemed to eat like acid at the air), and then it's time to roll up my sleeves and attack the mess of my possessions in the garage.

The majority of my books have been stored there since I returned to PA in October, and with the spring rains the garage has become horribly damp -- not a good condition for my bound and printed friends. Thursday night, having decided to dig around for one of my favorite Robin McKinley books, I slopped my way out to the garage -- it had poured so much rain all that afternoon that a lot of Erie's roads washed out and I soaked the brakelines of my car surging through puddles up to the axles -- to find wet boxes and sodden books. Thankfully, since I have been cultivating over the past few years an attitude of, "It's only stuff," I wasn't totally devastated, although seeing some of my nearest and dearest in their pitiable waterlogged condition tore at my insides. I rescued the ones most in need of it, stacked the rest where the water couldn't reach them, and decided to take care of things once and for all on Saturday.

I decided this will be yet another good opportunity to weed through my possessions and rid myself of the ones I don't really want. I have plenty of books that I don't ever see myself reading, and which I only bought because either they were cheap and I thought maybe I'd read them someday, or I felt obligated to own them because they were "classics." I plead guilty to the latter reason more in my undergrad years than since; after progressing through the English program and realizing that, aside from truly ancient literature, Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Mark Twain, I don't really care for anything written before 1900, I stopped plaguing my conscience with unnecessary purchases of books like Bleak House.

But I never threw any Bleak House-type books away, so leftover guilt haunts my shelves and I think the time has come to pare down my collection. It's all well and good to boast of an 800-strong library, but if that's the only reason I have 800 books, it's kind of a waste. Further, books are expensive to ship overseas, and I would like to be able to cart only the ones I love best across whatever ocean stands between Erie and my future "home" (I have a growing concept of "home" that mostly means I don't believe I'll ever really be home in this life, because home is so many people and places to me, none of which can ever in this present really converge, though instant communication helps) without breaking the bank.

Interspersed with my Operation Rescue or Remove efforts will be more essay grading for my second job. (I have quit the bookstore, so no more absurdly late hours unless I choose to keep them. Expansive sigh of relief.) So, all in all, Saturday promises to be a pretty full one; but solitary and restful nonetheless. I like to reserve Saturday as my weekly day of rest; my definition of day of rest centers around the concept of having no obligation to leave the house or even shower unless I want to. In summers this usually means I do leave the house after a shower in order to pursue fun days at the beach or, probably, pick fruit with Mom and learn how to can and make preserves; but the key is that I don't have to.

I have no problems with making commitments to various causes and people, because they are freely chosen; but I tend to hate pure obligations, which come without choice, and I bristle when they rear their demanding heads. Of course this doesn't mean that I don't fulfill my obligations. I go to work, pay my taxes, pay my bills, honor my parents, attend church, keep my promises. That's just being responsible and honorable. But I have set apart one day where I don't have to do most of these things (well, aside from honoring my parents. Not only is that part of my duty as a Christian, and not only is it something beneficial to all concerned, and not only is it rarely a difficult task, but it really helps keep the peace in the house). Where anything I do, I do because I have chosen to do it, and not because I "have to" or "should." Which means that if I do opt for something laborious, like my garage-hoeing-out, it comes without burden, because I'm under no constraint. And that's a sacred freedom to me.

Yes -- I enjoy commitments; I find satisfaction in responsibilities; I don't even mind duties all that much. But I hate obligations. They imply a certain mindlessness, where everything to me is mindful. When someone implies that I am under obligation to do something, my immediate, resentful response is, Why? Usually followed with, But that's stupid. The concept of liking all your relatives, for example. I don't like all of mine. Some of them are really unlikeable. I might love them, but I don't like them, and I don't have to like them. Love is a duty; liking is not. Liking is earned; it has to do with who a person is, not how I know him. And I certainly don't have to spend time with family members I don't like for no other reason than spending time with them. (This is why I never attend family reunions. Up till now I've made full use of the excuse that I live too far away; now that that excuse has evaporated, my family will just find out that I don't attend because I don't want to.) The upside of this appearance of being undutiful is that when I do spend time with my relatives, it means more because all of us want to be around each other.

So there you have it, folks. A little more rambling than usual today. I blame the weather and the porch. Something about the indolent heat of almost-June sunshine, the easy coolness of the lake-chilled breeze, the snarl and whine of mowers and buzz saws as the neighborhood gets its lawns and trees and porches ready for summer, birdsong and the sporadic hum of passing cars lends itself to a certain stream-of-consciousness that this contented girl can't deny.