The Things About Me

Lately, I've come to truly abhor the relationship I have with the things about me. The treasures and junk that have magnetized themselves to me over time swirl about my room like some kind of nest. I abhor their presence, their quantity and the petty attachments that I have for them. Pictures, ornaments, fabrics, books, seashells and house plants, heirlooms and old furniture.

Aging does this, bestows things upon us. Souvenirs of the years. Yet when it's time to move, they become dead weight. 'Oh, I cannot leave this behind!" "And what about this? I cannot get rid of it!" The familiar refrain is a psychological bore.

Me at age nine, having tea time with my grandmother.

My grandmother lived in the same house in Birmingham for nearly 40 years. She was a sophisticated Southern woman who loved art and music, and had traveled all over Europe. Consequently, her home was a virtual museum. I admired her grand nest and grew up within it. It was my solitary playground: endless books of literature and art, paintings, musical instruments and a myriad of elegant items to pour over. I dreamt one day of inheriting her style, her ability to collect and hoard beautiful things. I imagined myself, a sophisticated old man puttering about within his own gilded, ornately cluttered cage, admiring his baubles silently and proudly.

But when she died and her museum had to be disassembled, it became a maddening store of dusty loadstones, a seemingly endless pile to sort through and assess worth upon. The desire to shamelessly covet was immediately paired with the impulse to distain and wantonly discard. "This belonged to her, and she loved it, so I must keep it!" "Oh, how this makes me think of her, of my childhood, and so I must keep it!" Along with, "My God, SHE HAD SO MUCH STUFF! Get rid of it ALL!" Again, a tremendous bore. The endeavor lasted days and was a mental nightmare I swore never to repeat.

My room 32 years later, the same tea trolley beneath the window. 

Now, fully ensconced in middle age, I fight my things and my hoarding habits. The comfort of nice things and a pretty home continually contest the Buddhist shame they instill in me. The weight they place upon me and the drag they create have become debilitating anathemas. Yet each morning I sit in my bed, like some dandy Oscar Wilde, with coffee in hand and look about my pretty sarcophagus and am temporarily dazzled and hypnotized, and in some temporary way am pleased.

One solution to all this gyration is travel. During my periodic jaunts, I have found that I am most happy and content in hotel rooms and guest houses. Their sterility and simplicity immediately have me sighing with relief. To have only a bed, a dresser and a closet, a bathroom (even if it's down the hall), and my single bag of essentials, and to know that none of these things even belong to me or really even matter, is so pleasantly liberating. At these times, remarkably, I never find myself wishing for more.

I should learn from this, as it is surely one of the great lessons of travel. It is the ideal that I should strive towards. But its a journey worthy of Sisyphus: always two steps forward, then one backward.