Dream Truth
I loathe clutter. Children generate clutter. So does life, but child clutter is harder to clear. Ten years ago, Ed and I owned very little. Clothes. Tapes. An unconscionable number of books. A couple of guitars, a sax, a flute. Some knitting needles. Then we moved to Cairo and got stuff. No furniture yet, but plates and glasses and vases and that sort of thing. A stereo. A clock. A rug. Then as the years passed we got more stuff. Another rug. A beautiful bowl. More books. Lots of CDs. Then children and all their stuff arrived. As well as furniture because now we owned a house which doesn’t come with furniture.
Last night I sat knitting and thinking about how it would be good to reduce the amount of stuff in the house. To throw out things. “Have nothing in your house,” wrote William Morris, “which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” I went to bed thinking about all the stuff I would get rid of.
Then I had a dream. In my dream, Ed was not my husband but a sort of ex-boyfriend who was utterly broke. He was lazily packing a few things while the bailiffs hammered on his door. I knew they would come and take everything. And as I ran round this apartment, I realized that most of the stuff in it was mine, things I loved and that soon they would be taken by the thundering bailiffs. I tried to gather in my arms all the things I loved or found useful — cutlery and rugs and books and bowls and things people had given me and I wanted to hold them and remember and I was crying and running and feeling the impending loss and I couldn’t hold it all and I was going to lose it all.
And then I woke up.
So what is the truth? What I think awake? Or what I dream asleep?
Good dream! Both. I have always had too many books; way too many books! We have been decluttering our old farm house – letting go is hard – we get so attached to the material things as if they hold the memories and the value. It is all beautiful and valuable to you; there is some fear in letting go of it. Start small and you won’t believe how easy it gets – no one takes your memories away; it’s all just stuff (granted some of that stuff seems so much more valuable than other stuff).
I have no idea, but I love this post.
Ah, The complexity of human emotions…
Ah, yes. Exactly my problem. If someone I loved (now dead) loved this item, how can I just get rid of it? If something I loved that has passed–be it a trip or an idea or a relationship–won’t a well-loved item somehow keep it alive? Yes, at some level. But too many items, even well-lived things, just makes for nothing. We are blessed with a big basement in our tiny house. Our answer has been to store a lot of those things and rotate through them, highlighting a couple at a time. (We only learned this after doing it with Son’s toys….)
Letting go is hard to do. I keep trying to declutter and by the time I let go of some, there is more than before!
this has proven to be too much
for me to ponder tonight…
i have a headache…
i shouldn’t even be on the computer
and then
you throw a deep and philosophical
curveball like that?
heh.