Packing

What should I take to India? I want to live a different life, in a different society, with different ideas and goals. It is warm there; life will be simple. Apart from the basics, such as a few clothes, I need my technical devices: laptop, phone, camera. And what else? A good flashlight, because the dirt roads there are not lit. And books… There will be a number of libraries there too. I have not read for ‘pleasure’ for a very long time. During my early university studies, I read many nineteenth-century novels: Brontë, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Balzac, Goncharov… In high school, it was ancient dramas by Sophocles or classics such as Shakespeare, but also Hesse. I enjoyed reading plays; it was intense, quick, stimulating.

Since I have been using the internet, and I have been doing so since the beginnings of the Netscape browser, my reading has changed. I read less linearly, jump around more, read many things at once. So I sometimes feel dizzy, and need books as anchors. The books that accompany me are always books that are theoretically very densely woven. I also read them only very slowly, usually just a few pages, and then I again have much to think about. I do not understand how people devour complex books. Books that interest me constitute an entire cosmos of thought. Such a cosmos is difficult to grasp. It is a little like traveling. Some people want to see everything, to have been everywhere; they collect stories and photographs, and yet have not really been there. Other countries, cultures, languages surely need time. You have to approach them slowly, wait for an invitation, be polite and respectful.

Here, too, the attitude of consumption is probably the guiding force. Connected with it is a capitalist valorization that apparently serves self-presentation and earns social points. I always found that suspect. Sure, I also enjoy being entertained, consume media because it is fun, distracts me, or simply produces great feelings. But this distraction is not lasting for me. I do not remember films or books or places, etc… What interests me is how something has changed my thinking. How I have become something different. Encounters with books and places bring about a change; after a real encounter, I am a different person, or a different animal, or a different work, depending on how each wishes to perceive themselves…

24 books, an intertwining, an experiment. An artificial juxtaposition. What would a dialogue between Deleuze and Aurobindo have looked like? Would they have had anything to say to each other?