07.07.08

Clearing the mind

Posted in Life in general, On writing at 10:19 am by Marion

In honor of the National Holiday-weekend, I undertook some serious clearing out. Like most Americans, I own too much stuff.

We come from a tradition of lacking … coming to the New World with no possessions and scraping through on starvation diets while we learned how to grow our own food in this alien place.

Of course Native Americans thrived here, having learned all about farming and cooking corn, which was an Indian staple. We Europeans learned a great deal from them, before repaying them by nearly wiping them out. (That’s another story.)

Then, during decades of hard-scrabble living, we moved west and south, and learned to conserve, reuse and cling to everything — scrap cloth, paper, wood and especially metal.

During the Great Depression, these habits served us well. My grandmother still holds on to rubber bands, string and aluminum foil.

Yet in our times, we have too much of everything. Consumer items are cheap, thanks to Chinese exports (another story, too).

We don’t know how to deal with this abundance, and the old habits that served us well now expose us to pathological levels of clutter and hoarding.

Not wanting to end up like that, I try to go through my possessions once or twice a year, culling what I can part with.

I’m finding that the more I understand myself in a big picture way, the less I need all that stuff around to help define and support me.

I have adopted an elementary school which receives anything that could be used in art projects; the library gets books, CDs and magazines. A women’s shelter boutique gets clothing that’s still attractive, while the older, unwearable cotton items go into the compost (I’m not kidding!)

After clearing out my home, my mind is more clear, as well. A good day to get to work on a new archaeology feature, my new story “Poison” and whatever else comes my way today.

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