Five years ago, I left America. Now I live far away from universities and libraries and mega bookstores, outside the cheap shipping zones of online behemoths, in a climate unfriendly to the longterm preservation of organic material, including paper goods. My house is modest, my storage space is minimal, and there’s an active volcano right next door. I have neither the wish nor the practical ability nor the extra coin to get or have or keep more stuff. I guess I’ve learned this lesson in my life, that books burn, and houses burn, and cities burn. The whole world is a burning thing.

To be alive is to travel and it’s best to travel light. So I use cloud storage, digital photos, ebooks, online libraries, which are all lighter and cheaper than books and notebooks and pencils and pens. And I was wondering, is this the best use of technology, I mean for human beings in general, to help us travel light? Always to be ready to leave. Or does technology only give the illusion of lightness, not the reality of it? It has its own kind of weight, if it postpones an inevitable question. If it is a habit-forming postponement of the most important questions. No matter how light, it will still be gone when the network burns.

Good advice for living near a volcano: cultivate clear sight and the readiness to leave. (What have you done lately to get ready?)