How Many Books Did You Bring?

Fortunately, nobody at Johanneshof is going to ask me how many books I've brought, the way my mom and sister always do; so I won't have to lie.

I keep adding books to the pile by the suitcase. The scale of just-in-case reading needed for international travel is well beyond that for a weekend jaunt to visit my mom. I am bringing Jack Kerouac's Desolation Angels, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (the British paperback with the alternate title, Fiesta); for the non-fiction that would last forever if I get stuck somewhere and run out of everything else, Lisa Randall's Warped Passages. And seven mysteries (well yeah; it's a ten-hour flight each way, and lots of airport waiting time, and that's before anything goes wrong...)

And also Kaz Tanahashi's translations from Dogen, Moon in a Dewdrop. Which hardly counts as reading matter. But in theory at least, the Dogen seminar which Baker Roshi and Norman Fischer are presenting is part of what I am going there for. (And no, seminar won't be in German. Roshi and Norman teach in English, with translators.)

The other part: to touch base with very old friends, before moving on into my new life.