Although we hate to admit it, everyone has their price. When I used to sell cars, the guys liked to talk about money a lot, its part of the sales mentality, anything for a buck. Anyway, we would come up with scenarios and prices and see who would do what for what amount. When you start getting to truly ridiculous amounts of money it is hard to find what some one would NOT do. There are MANY things that one would do for, say, one billion dollars?real cash money?one Billion dollars. What was interesting to me was how many (of this small sampling of a certain type of male, i.e. mostly young hustler type) guys would give another guy a blow-job for ten thousand dollars in a private setting, but would not do the same thing at, say, half-time on the fifty-yard line at the Super Bowl for a million dollars. Variables make a difference. And how many women are willing to show their breasts for plastic beads at Mardi Gras, who might otherwise not show them on the street to a stranger for ten or twenty dollars? For that matter, how many things do we do for free all the time that we would NEVER do for ten or twenty bucks, or even a hundred?

So, where am I going with all of this? Well, as I said before, I am working on down-sizing much of my life/material possessions. Some of the things that have for years been a mainstay possession were my books. I’ve lugged them around for centuries it seems. I’ve clung to boxes and boxes of literature, art, history, fiction, science, philosophy, veritable crates of Babel. I finally figured that between the internet and public libraries I could definitely and finally lighten my load in this area. Overall, it was a pretty painless decision as I looked through the stacks and chose the few keepers and which ones could be liberated.

The pain that followed was one I never saw coming. After lugging seven full boxes of books into Half Price Books I walked out with 24 dollars. Like silver coins, I felt dirty and corrupt with them in my pocket. Something about the entire exchange felt cheap, tawdry, demeaning. I reflected with great sadness on my lost friends, companions from my youth and through the course of much of my life. It is amazing how much character and weight they held in my thoughts and memories?and to have sold them for paltry change was almost more than I could bear.

Don?t misunderstand me, I am happy to have the books find a new home, but there are just some things that I would rather do for free.

Book donations for this program are accepted locally at:
Dallas Buddhist Association, Inc.
515 Apollo Road
Richardson, TX 75081
Tel: (972) 234-4401