By the end of this year, I will have written more than seventy-five-thousand words this year alone. At the same time, my book will have swollen to more than one-million and two-hundred-thousand words written over twenty-eight years. This is what my records show, and my records are pretty close to the mark when it comes to writing. The very fact that this is so worries me, though. However silly my words or my count, I am still hording or collecting—activities I find detestable in all walks of life. Today I stumbled upon yet another reason to feel this way in B.K.S. Iyengar’s Light on Yoga: “The Yogi feels that the collection or hoarding of things implies a lack of faith in God and in himself to provide for his future.”[1] For are not written words things and nothing but things?

Addendum (October 3, 2016)

And by the end of this year among years, I will have written about a hundred-thousand words this year alone. At the same time, my book will have swollen to three-million and four-hundred-thousand words written over forty-one year. This is what my records show, and my records remain pretty close to the mark when it comes to writing. In short, I am hoarding or collecting as though I have never even heard of B.K.S. Iyengar, let alone read anything he has ever written. And as though I have never written this piece among pieces. Which only goes to show that written words are things and nothing but things for me. As well as that hoarding or collecting is all I am actually concerned with. Alas, this is the only meaningful reading if this piece that comes to my mind a bit less than thirteen years later.

Footnote

1. London: Thorsons, 2001, first published in 1966, p. 16.