An interesting struggle I find is trying to reconcile the Spartan and the Omnivore in my life. This shows up most acutely in the dream that I can pick the 10 books, or the one backpack, or the smallest universal first aid kit; versus the sprawl of library books, records, paintings, etc., that I cannot imagine doing without. Aldous Huxley had this problem as well, and came up with ingenious solutions -- he purchased what was for its time an incredibly expensive onion-skin edition (onion-skin being the lightest of all possible opaque papers) of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which he carried around with him on his hikes. The e-book may well be the grandchild of this impulse.

But I can see it in other things: travel guitars, backpackers songbooks, field guides -- how to cram the most into the least amount of space. I notice that, for other reasons, the Japanese are big on this: those complete carpenter's kits on a credit card. On good days, I am reminded of the analogy of the human brain -- trillions of cells in a tiny space -- on bad days, I am reminded of one of those closets crammed to the ceiling, whose door one dare not open for fear of avalanche.