impedimenta
The familiar indecision of packing books before a trip. They must all fit into a drawstring bag that takes up about a quarter, or perhaps a third, of the primary bag, which also needs to contain everything else one could possibly imagine needing, as well as many things no one could possibly find useful but that are comforting and so carried along. Setting aside Donne, again, as well as books that are too large, too small, too familiar, too unknown, books that fail the test of an aleatoric reading (usually but not always page sixty-eight, the first sentence), books that pass the test too easily. Trying not to take more than a book a day, knowing that even if one could read all of them, one won’t, but that having options, having even a narrow choice, is the only thing that makes any sort of action possible.