Two months ago I moved from Melbourne to Sydney. I was fairly relaxed about moving because I was thinking about the beach and seeing Sydney friends and not so much about putting things in boxes and saying goodbye to Melbourne. When the time came to put things in boxes I realised I didn’t have any boxes. I thought: hmm. I thought: what if I donate most of my clothes/things to St Vincent de Paul? It seemed like a good thing to do. I took shirts off my clothes rack and thought: goodbye shirts. I picked shoes up from my floor and thought: goodbye shoes. In the hallway I saw the bookcase. I walked to the bookcase. I thought: I don’t want to throw away my books. I stared at my books. I stared at my suitcase. I put my suitcase next to the bookcase and tipped all my books into my suitcase. I slapped my hands like: wow, that was easy. I smiled. I started pulling my suitcase towards my room. It moved slowly. I remembered I’d only booked twenty kilos of check-in luggage for my flight. I breathed out. I thought: okay. I sat down and began going through my books, picking the ones I would keep and the ones I would leave behind.

Putting my books into piles felt pretty bad. I didn’t like it. It seemed like I was definitively saying, ‘This book is good’ and, ‘This book isn’t.’ I don’t know. I don’t think you can do that. Because people have different ideas of what is good and what is not. So I sat there for a while. Sometimes when I’m focusing on a specific task I’ll get sidetracked by thoughts or things that seem more interesting or fun. This can happen when I’m reading. Or when I’m writing. Or even when I’m talking to someone. Except sometimes this doesn’t happen. Sometimes, I get so lost in something it surrounds me and I feel like I’m being eaten but in a way that being eaten is a good thing. I started taking books out of my suitcase. I held each one up in front of me, addressing it by title. I wanted to know if they had eaten me. It seemed important to only take things that had eaten me alive.