the peril of possessions

It’s Sunday, around 2 in the afternoon, and I’m still in my jimmy-jams, on my fourth cup of tea, feeling very procrastinatory.

Sure, I finished reading a screenplay (‘Vanilla Sky’ by Cameron Crowe) and knocked off a couple of drafts for future posts, but still, it’s a beautiful calm sunny day outside after a week of torrential rain, which had the added benefit of pointing out the gaping rusted holes in the gutters by my bedroom window. Freaking Niagara out there. Had to get the earplugs out and pretend I didn’t have to add that to the list of things that must be urgently fixed in this place.

So what’s my task going to be for the afternoon? Spring Clean!

I’m always set on northern hemisphere time when it comes to the good spring clean. For some reason I only ever feel like doing it when we begin our descent into winter. It seems to make more sense. The world (well this half anyway) winds down and gets ready for hibernation. What better time to trim the deadwood?

As I look around this place I’m disgusted with the amount of clutter, junk, trash, dust-collectors and useless things I haven’t pointed my eyes in the direction of for at least a year. I feel like throwing everything out. It’s so claustrophobic.

Possessions become the possessor. We buy things, which require more things, which require us to work more, so we can buy more things, which require more things, and around it goes.

We can’t take any of this with us, yet we build up an impressive amount of junk anyway. Why? Are we crazy? Quite possibly.

Mental peace and a mountain of possessions are mutually exclusive. The more crap you have, the more crap you have to worry about.

So I’m going to be ruthless. Start at one end of the house and put everything I own through an interrogation – do I use you? Have I used you lately? Well then what are you doing here?

This might take a while. I only hope at the end of it I feel like I’ve also cleaned out a corner of my brain in the process. Too much clutter! Inside and out!