I'm not coming out 'til this is all over

I have boxes and boxes of books, of papers, old class notes, printed emails from my mother, cartoons and fortunes. We don't have space for it all so they sit in their dark corners slowly accumulating dust and waiting for the moment I have to find something and start digging through every one, leaving the contents shaken and disheveled from their initial standpoint. What is important enough to get out? My Latin, my favorite fiction, Marx and Freud; the dictionaries and Harry Potter and all the math textbooks. There is no real reason to hold onto many of these things - most of these books I can easily do without, running to the library if absolutely necessary. I have found it relatively easy in the past day to go through all my clothes and weed out the things I rarely or never wear, even things I have held onto for years "just in case" are now in the give-away box, but not with books. I am not sure what makes the printed word more special than an old pair of shorts - often neither quite fits right anymore but has a history of sentimentality behind it. Tony sent me a link today about a contest to create a piece of entirely plagerized fiction (properly footnoted, of course) drawing from at least five different sources. I am sorely tempted to give it a try, although I am not sure where to start and even in thinking about it have run into what are surely the greater challengers - finding a single narrative voice/person, not including too many characters, finding authors with similar enough styles to hang together. I wonder about splicing conversations from two books together, or even three - would it end up making sense? Like patchwork jeans it must be done with a good eye and a steady hand neither of which I am sure I possess in great enough capacity. Especially in my current frame of mind - restless, frustrated (why won't the plumber call so I can leave?) - I doubt if I possess the concentration. Perhaps I will rummage through a box, find an old sweatshirt and my Benner and give some Greek a shot. If I can do that, surely anything is fair game.