There’s a notion the United States is sinking by about one-tenth of an inch a year.
Why? Is some kind of tectonic-plate process causing the sinkage?
No. They say it’s because of all the National Geographic magazines people are saving in bookcases, basements, attics and garages.
That’s only funny if you yourself have saved National Geographic magazines and know how heavy they are when stacked up. For many years, I used to save them. I not only saved the ones I received in the mail month after month, year after year, but I collected old ones even from the decades before I was born. If I’d so much as glimpse an old National Geographic at a sale (they’re easy to spot instantly because of their distinctive yellow borders), I’d make a beeline to it and snatch it up to buy. I had more than a thousand of them, stacks and stacks so heavy the floor boards must have been groaning.
One day 20 years ago, when I was preparing to move, I stood in a back room pondering those stacks and shelves, and my heart started sinking. It dawned on me right there and then I’d have to leave them behind. They would be a heavy burden to move. And where would I store them in an apartment? Yet, I couldn’t bring myself to haul them off to some recycling place. Such a tough decision. It was like having to part with an art collection; I had long considered each National Geographic magazine a work of publishing art.
Fortunately, that same day, one of the moving helpers came to the rescue.
“You must have been collecting them a long time,” he said, admiring the rows and rows of bright yellow spines of the magazines.
“Yes, too long,” I said. “Now I have to get rid of them.”
“If you don’t mind, I’ll take ‘em,” he said. “I love those magazines.”
“They’re yours,” I said with relief. “Have at ‘em.”
I still subscribe to National Geographic. They’re always a pleasure to read, but I no longer save them. I’ve learned my lesson: too many, too heavy, no room.
Each year, when spring-cleaning time rolls around, I have to deal with the inevitable magazine-banishment ritual – not for National Geographics but for the other magazines that stack up.
Against the walls of my den/reading room are stacks of New Yorker magazines, piles of AARP magazines, Food Network magazines, Smithsonian magazines, TIME magazines, Rolling Stone magazines. Magazines and more magazines here, there and everywhere throughout the house. Most of them have been partly read, but mostly they are stacks of good intentions – intentions that some day soon, when time permits, I’ll get around to reading. They are riddled with sticky notes slapped onto the articles I meant to read. Some day.
However, when fresh spring breezes flow through the house, I know in my heart the “some day” is not going to arrive, at least not for non-stop magazine reading. So what I do is lug all the stacks onto the kitchen table. Then I quickly riffle through each magazine, checking for the stories I marked and meant to read. When I find an absolutely “must-read” story, I put that magazine aside, winnowing down the stacks to just a couple dozen magazines. It takes a good half day to complete the magazine-banishment process.
It’s a good springtime feeling to get rid of clutter, and yet . . . And yet, it’s a dispiriting feeling, too, at least when it comes to banishing magazines, because the process is yet another reminder of how living is dogged by so many good intentions, projects uncompleted, aspirations unrealized, do-lists undone. And that’s the trouble with life. So much to do, so little time.
