M. and I in the middle of some home remodeling, just painting and staining after the contractor has finished, and otherwise putting things back together.<\/p>\n
In the past, when we moved into a new house or apartment, we claimed our territory by first doing a fire-bowl purification, followed by building brick-and-board bookcases.<\/p>\n
Yep, here we are, still decorating in Early Grad Student Style, more timeless than Colonial or Mission or Louis XIV. <\/p>\n
Now we have a new panoramic view of the Wet Mountains, spread across two walls — and less room for bookcases. The purge is on, and it ripples from the livng room through the bookcases in the study and the bedroom too.<\/p>\n
I stand in front of a bookcase with cardboard cartons at my feet. The books by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whom I quote in everything I write — those stay. The books by the Pulitzer-winning poet whom I admire but never really “got” — they go into the box for the student literary club’s fall fund-raising book-sale.<\/p>\n
A friend who shares the “small house, many books” situation says “No extra space, and no books I want to purge!” There is defiance for you. But he is a writer in a tiny town, thirty miles from a half-decent library. And he wants to keep his rectangular friends close. I understand.<\/p>\n
Maybe getting rid of books makes room for new books: new friends, new ideas, new experiences.<\/p>\n
But it is a sad process too. It is realizing that I will never make time to learn XYZ or that technological changes have made my books on EFG obsolete. It is saying farewell forever to the me who was interested in PQR. <\/p>\n
So far I have filled two cartons for the university literary club’s fund-raising book sale, one our little two-room public library, and one of the university library, if they want them.<\/p>\n
And then I sit on the sofa and watch a distant thunderstorm flicker on the ridges through our new double-glazed casement windows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
M. and I in the middle of some home remodeling, just painting and staining after the contractor has finished, and otherwise putting things back together. In the past, when we moved into a new house or apartment, we claimed our territory by first doing a fire-bowl purification, followed by building brick-and-board bookcases. Yep, here we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[3,7],"class_list":["post-921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-blogging","tag-publishing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-eR","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8476,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8476","url_meta":{"origin":921,"position":0},"title":"Remembering Ed Steinbrecher and His Esoteric School","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 23, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Looking for something in the bedroom Craft\/astrology\/Tarot\/magick bookshelves this morning, I ran across a copy of Edwin Steinbrecher's The Guide Meditation. (It's still available from Samuel Weiser and it's good.) I checked with Dr. Google and discovered that Steinbrecher, an astrologer and occult teacher, had passed away in 2002 \u2014\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"astrology\"","block_context":{"text":"astrology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=astrology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/steinbrecher.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":14085,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14085","url_meta":{"origin":921,"position":1},"title":"The Case of the Paranormal Pincushion","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 1, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"In my last post, I mentioned the English writer Mary Ann Norton's \"Borrowers\" books, which my sisters and I treated as enjoyable kids' books. It was a long time before it occurred to me that possibly she made up a story around actual events. I have had a quite a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"paranormal\"","block_context":{"text":"paranormal","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paranormal"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/pin-cushion.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/pin-cushion.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/pin-cushion.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/pin-cushion.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":8491,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8491","url_meta":{"origin":921,"position":2},"title":"The Old Ones Built Wisely","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 20, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"My house comes with its own solar calendar, sort of. I discovered when M. and I moved here in the 1990s that the equinoctial sunset occurs in a notch formed by the ridge to the west, as viewed from the front porch. Surely the ancient builders planned this! Actually, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"equinox sunset","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/equinox-sunset.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/equinox-sunset.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/equinox-sunset.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":771,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=771","url_meta":{"origin":921,"position":3},"title":"Gallimaufry","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 26, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Abstracts of articles published in The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies are now available online and searchable.Advanced Book Exchange is my normal starting place for used or out-of-print books, but it is getting some competition from ChooseBooks.com, which claims to be more selective or something. Naturally I went\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":123,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=123","url_meta":{"origin":921,"position":4},"title":"A Cigar for Ken Hanson","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 19, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"The Reed College alumni magazine came today, announcing the passing of several faculty members of my time there, including my thesis advisor, the poet Kenneth O. Hanson. (I like the way the article calls Greece \"the country that he discovered in 1963.\" Land ho!) Regrets: that I never gave his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11375,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11375","url_meta":{"origin":921,"position":5},"title":"“These Are Dangerous Books”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 11, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Dale Pendell, erudite writer of \"the poison path,\" author of Pharmako\/Poeia, Pharmako\/Gnosis, and Pharmako\/Dynamis, died two years ago, but I only recently found a video of his memorial service. I am starting this video at the 30-minute mark, because that is when Gary Snyder comes on. Quite simply, I think\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animism\"","block_context":{"text":"animism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/pharmakopoeia-scaled.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}