Stuff
Packing up shop when moving house has a curious way of reminding you of the awful attachments we forge with objects.
For the past few days, I’ve been weaving my way through a maze of cardboard and mess. Pitching coats, bibelots and every old thing into boxes, pausing now and then to go maudlin over a book or a band, or a doohickey thought lost, before cramming it in with the rest… and wondering how sane it is to be so attached to these things.
The weightiest bulk of our stuff is books, and I feel quite smug that I managed to throw 10 away (outdated software manuals and old guides to markets I’ll never penetrate). I keep coming across ransacked paperbacks as fragile as flowers at the end of their bloom span, and thinking I really should trash them. But I can’t.
Some I’ve been lugging since student days across Canadian towns and borders, and later over oceans and from home to home in this foreign land. It’s silly, I know, but somehow they’re my anchor (both literally and figuratively, alas). Their dust and dishevelment and presence reassure me to no end.
They remind me of the inside of my head at 14 and 20 and etc. years old, and of how much there will always be left to learn. They rebuke my growing isolationism, make me feel dumb and so grateful.
All this overwhelmed by the unsettling that invariably comes with continually moving from place to a place to lay down your stuff. Each new beginning giddy with hope, but tempered by wary from what the years have shown you. And again, the nagging image of black holes that goes with the slapping down of money each month to occupy rooms that belong to another.
I am far too obsessed with anchors.
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Comment
- Yeah, I’ve moved quite a number of times and it always feels weird. You never get used to it.
There are bonds that are built between the person and the place he lives in, memories, stuff he bought in that place, stuff he enjoyed in that place. It’s almost like breaking up with someone when you leave one place and move to another.
The process of packing stuff lets you go through all the stuff you have bringing back more memories, more snapshots of your life and mindset in the past. It lets you find things you thought were lost and gone for good and sometimes things you wonder why you ever bought in the first place.
Moving is a weird mixture of heartbreak, excitement and hope.
Oh and yeah, renting sucks.
— Subzero Blue Jul 9, 2:40am # - Stuff is the accumulated weight of our lives that we carry as we inexorably transform from being nomadic to sedentary creatures.
To paraphrase Monty Python’s paraphrase of the common funeral liturgy: “from nothing we came to nothing we go – so we’ve got nothing to lose.” While it’s true – it is the hardest thing to do: letting go of stuff in all its forms.
The challenge of life is to keep sharp pruning shears.
— GMR Jul 9, 8:01am # - I have a difficult time getting rid of books acquired during my days as a college student. They are as much momentos of a time as any photo. When I pick one up or even just see it sitting on a shelf, I remember the friends who were in the class with me, the times we had outside of class, the professor, and the excitement of discovery that was so much a part of my life at that time.
On the other hand, as someone who has moved often, I learned to make choices about what was worth moving time and again. Books take priority over anything in my kitchen anytime. ;^)
— Karmon Jul 9, 8:40am # - As someone who has disposed of several collections over the years (not to trash, of course), let me offer the alternative view. I couldn’t wait to get rid of books acquired during my college days, precisely because of the memories associated with them. All those Norton Editions? Gone in the first wave of books sold to help pay for my post-degree year lugging a backpack around Europe. I’m pretty certain that I don’t have a single book I bought in university.
Later I developed an interest in architecture, and built a small but good collection of books on the subject. Architecture books are bloody expensive. Then I realised one day that I wasn’t looking at them anymore, and that my interest in architecture had waned considerably. So I sold them all and used the money to buy poetry instead.
I’m now looking at a press of poetry books and wondering who would give me a good price for more than half of them.
In the end, I suspect only the typography, palaeography and grammars will survive for many years to come.
— John Hudson Jul 9, 10:09am # - Nothing like having those anchors tear loose in the middle of some less than perfect storm to enable a perspective that seems maybe less consequential this side of that event.
I’ve lost too much to not sentimentalize things – even socks. Old, thready, worn-at-the-heel, only have one left now and it doesn’t fit, the gift of someone close. Each time it comes to it, and I back down. Soon it will see duty as an oil rag, or a middle of the night unmentionable, and it won’t be deserving of the wash, and off it will go, but I’ve had it 15 years. A sock.
Your imagination says I must have basements and attics filled but no, I live in a 9 by 12 foot room with all I own under the bed, mostly. A chair and a box or two in the other room. Guitars, that’s it.
10 books is fierce and Spartan.
It isn’t the things and the having, it’s the lust. Just like with sex, it isn’t the act that’s profane it’s the bad priority of the hunger.
See those pictures of the refugees on the mountain road with the mattress and the duffel and the old lady and the little kids. A wheelbarrow, a wagon, a broke-down car. There’s perspective for you. Bombs and a timetable and here we go. Everyone’s crying or near it and you, you have to choose and tell them what goes and what stays.
Monkishness is just the opposite though, yes?
Here, things, go on now. Back into the world.
The purge of divestment has its stripped-down grace. And roomsfull of uncataloged gatherings too. It’s wonderful, that we even have these things to decide and talk about is wonderful.
— Lance Boyle Jul 9, 3:41pm # - Not that this has anything to do with anything, but “outdated software manuals and old guides to markets I’ll never penetrate” is one of the best euphemisms for porn I’ve ever read.
— barnes Jul 9, 4:34pm # - I’ve set myself a target of selling most of my 2000 books and other collections before I move to Spain in 15-20 years time: but there are many that will be going with me.
heh! excellent word, thanks:
From Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913):
Bibelot Bi`be*lot”, n. [F.]
A small decorative object without practical utility.
— John Jul 10, 6:10am # - I would love to pack everything up and live out of my car for a time, but could I survive without my things? Physically, yes, but emotionally? Most likely yes, but I’m still too afraid to find out for sure.
— cmb Jul 10, 6:46am # - The last time I moved I just about lost myself. I was assured when I found my legs again, still attached to the same torso, sore again at the knee and telling myself that next time, next time I will hire movers to move all of this shit.
— James T. Jul 11, 6:38am # - I’ve moved for the last time in a while. I moved a lot for a few months there, and my belongings got very pared down. The lady renting a room from me, though, is a packrat, and she has stuff in boxes from when she was in elementary school. I don’t like that much stuff, but the stuff I have I’d like to keep with me, even if it does mean I have to lug the boxes of books (most of what I kept ended up being books) whenever I move next. Should be several years, though, since I actually bought the house rather than renting.
When I unpack my books it means I’m home, finally. They are definitely an anchor for me.
— Wendryn Jul 11, 5:31pm # - My sister moved in with me yesterday. Elements of drama, loss, and potential tragedy accompanied the loading of boxes and furniture; her tree frog had escaped the night before. As we emptied out her room, scanning for a shiny green flash of movement, we were repeatedly disappointed. Which meant, we assumed, that he was somewhere else in my mother’s house, highly squishable and slightly toxic.
At the end of the day, in her new room, my sister went to look for a book to comfort herself. Among the jumble of unpacked boxes, bags and baskets was her current read. And sitting on the book was her frog.
— stone Jul 12, 11:08am # - I’ve parted with many books for various reasons through the years, yet my personal library still hovers around 600+ volumes.
I have the very first book I ever held, thanks to my grandmother who saved it for me, and it became the very first book my daughter held in her life. If she chooses the path of motherhood, I hope to lay the book in the hands future generations.
I have the first book that took me out of a small town in the midwest and transported me to pre-revolutionary China and its society of farmers, working poor, merchant classes. The book is in tatters and resides by my writing stand on my desk.
I have the two books that frightened me with a theme I had never thought was possible, a life without books by forces outside of myself.
I have mundane usage books too, my calligraphy catalogs, dictionaries, thesauruses, music history and terms.
I’ve lugged these books to six residences in my short lifetime, and know I will continue to lug them about to future moves.
Could I live without them? As many have said, yes. Yet, it would be a life less full, less rewarding, less charmed than the life I lead now.
— roggey Jul 13, 9:12am # - PKramer great story thank you
— msg Jul 13, 2:42pm # - Well, it’s really all about death, isn’t it? Edward Said wondered if, without any ‘cultural’ knowledge, we were exiles from our own lives. Ah, the inescapable self… .
— ross mckie Jul 13, 10:44pm # - Les bibelots nous rattachent à cette vie, et à ce titre ils n’ont pas de prix même s’ils sont sans valeur.
You’ll get the house inevitably, books just bring weight to our vanity but they are a necessary load to carry in this world.
wish you a happy 14th july
mickael
— mickael Jul 14, 3:34pm # - The last time I moved I threw out two cats.
— Ed Jul 14, 8:48pm # - Central to every move are the people moving. With this in mind, I offer the following simplistic rhyme.
When one must seek a home more sure,
rendering choice a must endure.
What to take and what to leave,
what to pack and what to heave?
Of all the things one must not lose,
partner and children I would choose.
That accomplished I would not fret,
for challenge faced and challenge met.
— Jack Jul 30, 11:23pm #
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