Have you seen the show Hoarders? It’s fascinating — the wild extreme of American materialism. Homes literally caving beneath the weight of accumulated objects. Teetering piles, abandoned rooms, plumbing shut off for years, goats eating through walls. It gets pretty gothic. The show brings in family members, psychiatrists, organization experts, and a crew of junk-removal guys (saints, really) to try to find the home in the home. The narratives are riveting of how, why. And without fail, after every episode, I promptly stand up and load the dishwasher or take a bag of clothes to Goodwill. If ever you need motivation to clean, cue up the DVR and record this.
When my parents came from Cuba in 1960, they left everything. My father was sent alone at age 14 through a CIA program called Operation Peter Pan, and my mother’s family came with a single suitcase (photos, statue of St. Barbara) after their home was taken by the government. And while they worked their way to upper middle class and liked nice things, the message was always: objects are nothing, and be prepared to lose everything at any time. As I child I reacted against this — stamp collections, doll collections, saving every note passed in school. When I saw Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives as a young adult, I thought: I want that — a library-like home, walls lined in books. The comfortable weight of things. And now, well, between many interstate moves and an abiding wanderlust, I almost see it as a personal failure that all my belongings don’t fit in a car, or a suitcase. A few years ago I was technically living in SF but working almost full-time in Seattle for about a year and, while it was a pain in the ass, I also enjoyed the lightness of my life being one car, one suitcase, a laptop computer, an iPod and a phone.
Of course that all sounds precious given what’s happened in Haiti, and on our shores, and everywhere pretty much. But it’s interesting to think of what is essential, what objects remain sacred to people even when they have lost everything else. Yesterday I came across [thanks LL] this photography project called What I Keep that profiles the members of The Church Under the Bridge in Waco, TX — often homeless, or finding their way back from incarceration or addictions — holding the one object that they can’t live without and telling why. It is very moving. Most of us in this country have the luxury of well-padded caves, and from that vantage people like to think about this — it’s partly why Survivor is interesting to watch and playing “desert island discs” is fun. Who are we stripped down? What would we save in the fire? Examining our lives, pruning them back to the stems, cherishing the important things and creating space for new growth. We don’t always get to choose what we can keep — health, people we love, the hat on our head from blowing away — but it is worth thinking about what surrounds us daily, what is intentional and useful and worth feeding. What can we do without?
5 Comments
Nice blog post. A particularly nice touch to bring it back around to Haiti, and the church under the bridge.
Something about this post reminds me of the question of what defines “home”, and a poem I often cite, Robert Frost’s Death Of A Hired Man (full poem here: http://www.bartleby.com/118/3.html)
“Warren,” she said, “he has come home to die:
You needn’t be afraid he’ll leave you this time.” 115
“Home,” he mocked gently.
“Yes, what else but home?
It all depends on what you mean by home.
Of course he’s nothing to us, any more
Than was the hound that came a stranger to us 120
Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.”
“Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.”
“I should have called it
Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.”
Beautiful. Thanks for the poem.
Beautifully written, Jill. It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately myself: on the one hand, my home is a sanctuary, a refuge, a retreat from the chaos of the world. On the other hand, it’s like a flannel-lined prison that keeps me clinging to the padded comfort. This past June, when I rode freight trains with Central American migrants – people who had winnowed their lives down to one small backpack slung over their shoulder, I found myself in awe and envy of their freedom.
Cudos, very nicely written.
Besos y abrazos fuertes.
Slds,
Michelle
Hello there, Jill…..this blog post was passed on to me….very nice. For someone who also shares in your “everything must fit into my car” mindset, I often ponder the weight of my stuff. I have moved so often and find myself enjoying the process simply to pare down and start over once again….
It’s difficult for me to keep objects—I constantly tip back and forth between “need” and “want”, wondering what will be found if I suddenly have the misfortune of kicking the bucket before I have that stuff “in order”. For this reason I love living in my little studio—there is no space for fluff, for unnecessary accumulation. It is, as you say, more “intentional”.
I also often think of the weight of information that we are bombarded with on a daily basis—the massive amounts of entertainment, news, crap circulating on the interwebs–and find it extremely cumbersome. I’m not a true Luddite, but it all just makes me want to head for the hills for another sheepherding gig!
In the shadow of Haiti, we should really count our blessings and try to truly accumulate just one thing—authentic relationships with friends and family.
Les
So much interesting here — thanks for your comment. Just sitting here nodding my head at all you’ve said.
As far as your kicking-the-bucket thing, I’ve never heard anyone else say that but I always think that too — who else could defrag all this? I’d never want to make someone deal with it. My ideal “plan” at the end of my days would be to leave a suitcase, if even that, and all my paperwork tidy and my funeral or whatever pre-paid. Turnkey! :)
Re: information, I will invoke The Police who sang “too much information / running through my brain / too much information / driving me insane”. I love the deluge, we all do — feed us more more more… But it’s not even the quantity so much as the frequency and fragmentation — look over here, look over there. This article spooked a bunch of people because it resonated so much: Seeking: How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting — I think you’d find it interesting. You must tell me about this sheepherding past sometime (!). I love those moments when you feel your mind has cleared and you start to let things back in. Like when returning from travel and your city is new again, the filters clean.
So anyway, yes. What you said. :)