Our particular comet tail needs a trimming. The stuff we have will not all fit into the storage pod that arrived at our house. We must reduce our amount of possessions -- never a task I've found easy; I'm blaming the Lutherans -- among whose number I am counted -- and I'm not sure why. They seem, broadly speaking, a pack-ratty folk.
Anyway, we've had to start getting rid of crap lately, and I have had to design a sort of yes/no flow chart to allow myself to part with things, where if the answer is "no," it stops there and I discard the item, and if not I go to the next question. It goes like this:
- Is it my business to create a museum for the things I have while I am alive, as opposed to actually living?
- Am I so delusional to believe that anyone will ever create a such a museum for me one day?
- Would I even be interested in meeting the kind of weird people who would visit a museum like that?
- Is this old piece of crap the kind of thing I would want representing me in this stupid museum of my life that no one is ever going to build?
When that happens, it's almost always for one of two reasons. Either the thing in question came from somebody who "ain't wit us no mo" (this may include cool gifts from ex-girlfriends who still draw breath but are not, for obvious reasons, with me any more), or (BAM! tying it into the travel blog theme) things that either came from or accompanied me to faraway places.
Take, for example, the two cubic feet of Rubbermaid storage bin consumed by the souvenirs I brought back for Grandma, may she rest in peace. That stuff rebounded on me like one of Lord Voldemort's spells after she passed away, and I'm cursed with holding onto it all now.
Or the faded beige shirt with the horizontal green stripe across the chest and the stain from the lager I sloshed onto myself in London, for example. Or the battered copy of The Hostel Handbook from 2001, which rode around in my backpack for many a weary mile.
Or this ... this thing. A framed cover from a Maxim magazine I bought in Italy in 1999, a time in my life when stupid advice from misogynistic idiots and glossy photographs of sluts were very important to me. I still have this thing, though admittedly it has not been displayed since my wife came around. Yet somehow, even to this day, it has passed the aforementioned flow chart test and remained, hidden, waiting.
So basically, I have to get rid of it.
That hurts, too, because I mean, c'mon, I paid some people at the Hobby Lobby to make that frame for me, long ago -- but I'm sure that wasn't cheap. Not to mention it hung in pretty much every apartment I ever rented and was tolerated by every girl in my life for the past decade except the last. It's like a scar, in a way -- a part of who I am. Can I say that? It does the same thing a scar does in that it reminds me of a part of my past I'm not especially proud of, but it happened nonetheless, and I feel phony denying it. Like it or not, I was this guy.
And it came from Italy. What else did I bring back from there that I still have? Not the wine -- that's long gone. Seriously, all I've kept from that place is a few books. A compass. A bunch of shirts. A backpack. A ring. A bunch of patches. A flag. All the money I didn't spend. A hat. Tons of photographs. Three journals. A candlestick holder in the shape of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Okay, so I may actually be a hoarder.
In the end, however painful it was, I did toss that Maxim picture. And by toss I mean donate to Goodwill. Thinking I might buy it back.
