the year of letting go

back in january when i deemed this the year of letting go, i had no idea how true that would come to be. literally, let go of my day job at the end of february, the letting go is an organic process, filled with sudden insights, and lingering questions.


last week in preparation for a yard sale, i had to clean out the garage of years of collected debris. we use the garage as a dumping ground for all sorts of unwanted objects and debris. yesteday, taking 2 construction bags full to the town dump and tossing them into the bulk waste was a revelation. i actually felt myself lighten and lift.

for the last several days i've been rolling around the thought of taking the next year to clear out, and clean out the 1840's eye brow colonial we call home. to lighten our load of the possessions we bump into at every turn, or can't find when we come to need them. and of course to blog about the process.

my husband spends most weeks commuting on an airplane. and until my release from full time work, home was a place we rested our heads only 2 nights and 1 full day a week, leaving little time to edit and downsize our ever changing collections.

mostly with that kind of schedule one has to shut down to the ever growing list of things needing to be done and just accept things as they are. accepting things as they are is a great spiritual practice, but shutting down isn't. and when reality finally comes to rest it can be overwhelming.

the plaster ceiling in the living room is like the hachet in the basement stairwell of a hans christan anderson story that prevents a girl from descending the stairs in fear it will fall and kill her. my reading chair is just out of range of the inevitable crash. the plaster is cracking on the walls, mold is growing, paint peeling, wood rotting.

and still i shop.

two days ago i needed a little thrift therapy and as the bill tallied up a clutching feeling gripped my stomach. not over the money. i'd gone in with a mission: to find interesting ways to organize jewerly and art supplies, but of course i got side tracked. i am not exactly sure what it is that grips me so about old, used objects. of course if i ponder it long enough i can trace back the want to a memory or even another object i have just like it (another compulsion!), but the overwhelming desire to own confuses me. my head clouds like a cramped closet, an overstuffed attic.

a few days ago a friend who cleans houses recommended to start at the top and work your way down. when cleaning. which brings up interesting thoughts in relation to mind, intention and how we make our way in this physical world, our bodies and our lives. meditation comes to mind.

as we don't have a basement in the house, my studio and most of my clothing are relegated to the upstairs 3rd floor. a kind of attic, it often becomes another kind of dumping ground, the polar opposite to the garage, for things i treasure and can't find a place for. this includes everything from the deer bone and feathers i use in my art work, to jewerly making tools and supplies, a lifetime's collection of postcards and vintage clothing, and way back in the closets, larry's and my collections of pooh and simpson's memoribilia from years of yard saling when we lived in los angeles.

in boxes since we moved back to new york almost 10 years ago, i have been wanting to move them down to the kitchen and out the door for years now. and having just last night tackled my studio to make room for this summer's yard sale finds, i think there is a clear path from their place in the closet, down the stair, and out. and it occurs to me that often the biggest obstacle to clearing out the boxes - in our homes and our minds - is having a path of access that is clear and easy. the fact that these things have made their way to the back with so much protection packed around them, is a side fact of interest. are we saving them or stuffing them away? and how can we lightly lighten our loads, without torturing ourselves? how can we be gentle with a process that is cumbersome?

i'm always astonished at my mother's ability to simply get rid of things. her seeming lack of sentimentality over objects that seem so dear to me. but dearness changes. and as i sink into the year of letting go, i wonder how i can keep myself from acquiring more new possessions as the old find their way on.

just this weekend at the yard sale i had, a man reached into a container of detritus metals i hadn't bothered to look through and before i knew it an old vintate hose nozzel that may have been my grandfather's was gone for a quarter. that night, beset with regret i bought 3 from a seller on etsy for $10.

letting go means letting go of self judgment too.

so stick, or bear with me as i continue to process and blog about possessions, obsessions and the year of letting go.

interesting side note? i just finished reading the romanian: story of an obsession by bruce benderson. winner of france's prestigious literary prize, the Prix de Flor. It is an autobiographie erotique.



post script. 4 boxes of pooh memorabilia, and a box of video and 1" tapes of ad commercials made it down the stairs to the living room. i separated the boxes into thrift store donations, donations to a children's hospital and a box for friends with children. i kept a handful of the books. now to get them out the door and into the car!