bibliophile

my project for the evening has been reorganizing my bookshelves. people with extensive libraries should never move... too bad reading and travel are my two primary hobbies. but i always was an impossible mixture of contradictions.

and this shows up through my little collection. funny how much you can tell about a person (or certain people, at least?) through their books. not just the content; the organization too. it shows you how they think, and what they think about. or, in some cases, what they want you to think they think about. no wonder tracking sites (like this one, that joi recently addicted me to, darn her) are so popular in this age where we explain ourselves, anonymously and with less anonymity than ever, online all over the world.

what are we searching for? connection? identity? completion? if we share enough things with enough people, can we define ourselves through them? or is definition something that comes from within and can only ever be projected, with varying degrees of success, onto the world around us -- which is itself carefully chosen as part of that projection?

i have a cognitive psych section in the bookstore of my life, btw, for just such examination. although, honestly, the obsession with identity shows up throughout. i could explain it to you, sort of... but you'd have to be the kind of person, to start with, who cares about such explanations.