When I was an undergraduate students I lived off campus in a house with 17 young women; we actually called ourselves girls at that point in time. I shared a small room with a friend, and we slept in bunk beds with me on the top bunk. I often slept with all my books in bed with me. When I was conscious of the fact that the books were in bed with me, I would move them to my desk or the floor. When I was unconscious of their presence, I just slept with them until I needed them. My roommate and friends thought it odd, sometimes there was little room for me, but I laughed it off and continued with my strange and sharp edged bed mates. Then I graduated and totally forgot that I slept with textbooks most of my college years.
Now as an adult, married with three grown children, I again fall asleep with books; books are on my night stand and on the floor on my side of the bed. I often read more than one book at the same time. One book is my public transportation book, small and light, easy to stop and start without forgetting the plot line. Another is usually a work book, a bit heavier physically and intellectually. Another if often some gardening or household project book as I try to maintain our ever demanding old house. I am a frequenter of my public library as well as new and more likely used bookstores, reading for profession and pleasure.
As a doctoral student writing general comprehensive examination questions, I immediately went to the library and electronically ordered the books I thought I would need. I ordered books from all over the state and waited for them to arrive. I was a bit anxious about all the reading and writing required to adequately answer my question. My question was dense and intellectually challenging and, if I am honest, a bit intimidating. I never had a philosophy course, and was worried about the amount of time I would need to get a rudimentary understanding of the material. I was also reading translations of German works and uncomfortable that the translations might be missing some essence that I would need to really grasp the material. After all this background work would I have time to answer the questions?
I spent a few sleepless or almost sleepless nights when I realized the books were slowly creeping into my bed. I was carrying them to and fro without every really reading them. I would try, but at that moment it would all seem too deep for me. I continued carrying and paging, skimming prefaces and indexes, or just browsing at charts and graphic depictions of something. But almost unbeknown to me something very strange was happening.With only a few months left to do the work I became less anxious. Even as time was slipping away and my deadline loomed before me, I got more confident as I paged and dozed with my books. So here are my thoughts.
Relationships are important, even relationship with things. Not as things but as what they represent and what they connect us to. Establishing a relationship with books allows me to recognize something as accessible if I take the time to get at it or get to know it. During my comprehensive exams, becoming familiar with the weight, literally and figuratively, of the book gave me the confidence to struggle with the content; to question, to build on, to link to other material. My relationship with books during this process reminded me how to read, not in the linear way of cover to cover, but in the multi-spacial way linking concepts and ideas from all kinds of books, to experience, to conversations over and over again. Ultimately all this lead to the printed page and I got it down on paper.
As I look back over time and trace moments of learning that propel me forward or give me the energy or courage to begin something very new, this process seems to begin with sleeping with books.
There are many ways to access knowledge and for each person the means of access can be different. We don’t really know all we need to know about how people learn. We get information from all kinds of sources and who is to say that information is not moving from books to us, that at some point the very act of carrying and being with books doesn’t constitute some active pursuit that we haven’t yet identified.
Perhaps I am trying to tap into some collective unconscious and because someone else has done all the work for me, the author or even previous readers, and gives it as some great gift, through the books around me. Maybe I can use that information and move beyond what the sender was able to do at the moment in time. Perhaps this will become accepted practice in the future, and while not everyone will sleep with books, they will find some other way to jump start their personal learning treks into new territory. Maybe this is part of an emergence process and all we have to do is open our self to the possibilities and the future unfolds.
Of course It could also be that I got tired of carrying all those books around (life before Kindle) and thought, “Get it over with! Read and write and be done with it!”
Or maybe I am just a goof.
