One of the pleasures of the bookish life is the 'find,' the occasion on which, whilst browsing through a well-stocked used book store, one lights upon a volume which one would never discover in a commercial emporium devoted to the purveyance of contemporary schlock. One day, after a leisurely lunch, I walked into a book store on Mesa, Arizona's Main Street and stumbled upon Holbrook Jackson, The Anatomy of Bibliomania, a 1978 Octagon Books reprint of the 1950 original. There is something of Jungian synchronicity in this, as I had recently made the acquaintance of Mr. Jackson at Michael Gilleland's erudite salon. The author describes his purpose thusly:
My purpose in the following work is to discourse of the nature, excellences, uses, and diseases of books, and particularly to anatomize this humour of Bibliomania, through all his parts and species, as it is an habit, or a disease; and philosophically and medicinally to show the causes, symptoms, signs, expressions, meanings, manifestations, eccentricities, vanities, impudences, and, where expedient, the cures, for 'tis plain to conceive that it is often a genial mania, less harmful than the sanity of the sane, and most happy when endemic with moderation in the constitution of a man.
In doing so, I have described and opened up, as by a kind of dissection, not only those peccant humours (some of them) which have given impediment to the proficiency of learning and occasion to the traducement of the love of books, but also those more robust passions which are proper to bibliophilia: wherein, if I have been too plain, it must be remembered, fidelia vulnera amantis, sed dolosa ocula malignantis ['Faithful are the wounds of a lover, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy.' Proverbs xxvii, 6] to be true to any subject without frankness is impossible. These methods and motives at this present have induced me to make choice of the subject. (p. 39)
It is indicative of the leisurely pace of this work that this explanation of purpose is to be found only after 39 pages of close print. And the whole of it is written in this baroque style, one conducive to slowing down, taking one's time, and enjoying the moment. In these hyperkinetic times, people who value their sanity should devote some time each day to slowing down, not to mention loafing and napping, especially in the summertime when the living is easy. For example, one morning, sauntering back from the pool after a two-hour hiking and swimming work out, I paused a half dozen times to sample the fragrances emitted by the luxuriant blossoms occasioned by the recent monsoon rains which, in their abundance, threw the surrounding desert into a verdancy the likes of which I haven't seen in many years. In his famous essay "Nature," Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke of becoming a "transparent eyeball," a sort of transcendental spectator of the passing scene; I was for a moment a transparent nostril alive to the alchemy of nature's parfumerie — though, ever the conservative, I was careful not to snort any of the avaricious bees with whom I was in competition.
We all need to learn how to slow down, how to attune our eyeballs and nostrils to the marvellous qualia of this evanescent life. The universe is not striving to get anywhere in a rush or without a rush; why should the sage or would-be sage? Should he be any less cosmic?