Bookstore Bandit

Almost all of the books I read tend to fall into one or more of the following categories: (1) philosophy, (2) psychology, (3) poetry, or (4) fiction. I’ve come to the conclusion that I do not have a very well-rounded canon. To fix this problem, I’ve decided to dedicate the next few years of reading one book from each of the subject headings at Barnes and Nobles. Granted, it might be a better to utilize the Dewey Decimal Systems as my guide, but honestly, who ever learned how to use that thing? Not me.

My first selection is from either genetics or anthropology section. It’s called “The Seven Daughters of Eve.” I’m only 3 chapters through it, so I don’t have much to comment yet, but expect that future posts will include my own hand-drawn diagrams of the humane genome, accompanied, of course, by nifty arrows and pop-up video style footnotes. Donkey does science.

In other reading I’m doing, I’m about 120 pages through my Miller Williams collection of poetry. It’s really good. Here are a few excerpts:

from Notes from the Agent on Earth: How to be Human

Love is Fear and Lonliness fed and sleeping;
Faith is Fear and Loneliness explained,
denied and dealt in; Ambition which is envy
is Fear and Loneliness coming up to get you;
Death is Fear and Loneliness coming up to get you.


I like the idea of reducing the seeming complexity of human emotions to their component parts. I also like the idea of taking those component parts of human emotion and showing exactly how richly they can be expressed. The exercise is made no less interesting by choosing different human emotions. Sartre focuses on judgment and shame. Freud uses the Id and Superego to express a similar notion. Here, Williams uses Fear and Loneliness. I’m reminded of a line from a Stephen Dunn poem which goes something like, “Just mistake your Fear for Alertness and be happy for it.” What ease with which people could live if only they could maintain such perspective!


Here’s another cool verse, from Sitting Alone at Sunrise: Problems in the Space-Time Continuum

If I could be
in two places at once
I would be with you twice
all the time.