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| -rw-r--r-- | root-down.txt | 13 |
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diff --git a/root-down.txt b/root-down.txt index 0e4ec12..14c0b00 100644 --- a/root-down.txt +++ b/root-down.txt @@ -6,17 +6,19 @@ But in between the crap, the dirt as it were there are the occasional shards of Many moons ago I was down in Laguna Beach, CA at the now long gone Tippecanoe's clothing store when I ran across a relatively innocuous dark olive green shirt. Probably handmade, it looked a bit like an old-style baseball jersey, with an iron-on number three in red on the front pocket. On the back it had a cheery serif script that read "Fuck Our Society", flanked on either side by anarchy A's in padlocks. You bet your ass I bought it. -I was in a band back then, I played quite a few shows in it. My friend Ruben asked me to play with his band on the side, I'm pretty sure just because he wanted the shirt on stage with him.But this was Orange County CA in the mid to late 1990s, deviations from the norm simply didn't happen. I didn't wear it out much. Wearing it has always been a kind of performance. I haven't warn since I moved back east in 1999. +I was in a band back then and I played quite a few shows in it. My friend Ruben asked me to play with his band on the side, I'm pretty sure just because he wanted the shirt on stage with him.But this was Orange County CA in the mid to late 1990s, deviations from the norm simply didn't happen. I didn't wear it out much. Wearing it has always been a kind of performance. I haven't warn since I moved back east in 1999. Once, on the way to a show, we stopped at Trader Joe's to grab a snack for the road and while we were standing in line I felt a tap on the shoulder. I had been conscious of wearing the shirt since I got out of the car so I turned around expecting some kind of confrontation, but it was a tiny woman, not much over five feet tall who looked me up and down and then smiled and said, "I like your shirt." I felt like that was probably the shirt's high water mark. I don't think I've worn it since. Why do I still have it? Fuck our society's obsession with keeping things. I fired off an email to a friend I knew would want it and it's gone. -This particular purge is probably the biggest I've ever done, both because we've been in this house the longest and because I've made the most money. Money, no matter how frugal you might be, seems to breed stuff. It's not the purchases or the money that bother me though. Not even the dumb things like the $1300 TV that's now worth essentially nothing. It's the little things I did not stop myself from getting. It's the lack of personal awareness they demonstrate. The old banjo that caught my eye at a junk shop outside of Nashville, the old mailing label and postage box set, the antique cards, the mediocre books that could have been checked out and returned and the coffee mugs. How many coffee mugs do I actually need? +This particular purge is probably the biggest I've ever done, both because we've been in this house the longest and because I've made the most money. Money, no matter how frugal you might be, seems to breed stuff. It's not the purchases or the money that bother me though. Not even the dumb things like the $1300 TV that's now worth essentially nothing. It's the little things I did not stop myself from getting. It's the lack of personal awareness they demonstrate. The old banjo that caught my eye at a junk shop outside of Nashville, the old mailing label and postage box set, the antique cards, the mediocre books that could have been checked out and returned and the coffee mugs. How many coffee mugs do I actually need? How many books am I reading right now? -All these little things are symptoms of my failure to appreciate without possessing. +All these little things are symptoms of my failure to appreciate things without possessing them. -I pitched it all into boxes and dumped it at my favorite local charity thrift store. +I sold what I could on eBay. I took the books to a friend's yard sale and looked at them on the ground there in a cardboard box before I finally realized there was nothing special about them at all. + +The rest of the accumulation I pitched into boxes and dumped at my favorite local charity thrift store. Not everything goes though. I'm not a minimalist counting up my possessions. Not yet anyway. The bus may not be huge, but it's downright roomy compared to traveling with only a pack. We also have a storage unit for now. There are things I don't want to throw away, but which also don't belong in the bus. Like old photographs, which are probably the most exciting artifacts to stumble across in a moving dig. @@ -26,5 +28,4 @@ On the plus side this keeps the entirety of my photo collection to single shoe b I don't normally advocate for buying stuff, but a [Fuji Instax printer](http://instax.com/products/printer/) is on our short list of trip purchases. I want to leave my kids a record of their childhood that exists outside these digital walls. -That's always the hard part of these excavations, figuring out what actually has personal value and what doesn't I find I'm often wrong. I thought the banjo and the books had value to me, but they don't. Five years ago I almost threw out the photos. Now they're the only thing I might try to save in a fire. Sure I scanned them all so I have digital backups, but I remain unconvinced that the digital will outlast the physical. - +That's always the hard part of these excavations, figuring out what actually has personal value and what doesn't. I find I'm often wrong. I thought the banjo and the books had value to me, but they don't. Five years ago I almost threw out the photos. Now they're the only thing I keep around. |