Going Native

I saw an IMAX movie once about the Lewis & Clark expedition. The film showed the daring travels of this small group of explorers over rivers, fields and mountains in all weather. It also showed in dramatic detail the lengths these people went to carry with them massive amounts of crates, boxes and all sorts of supplies. They took a small city with them. While they were exploring completely uncharted territory, they seemed to put an astonishing amount of energy inward on managing their stuff. I wonder how often they took the opportunity to just look around.

Every so often, the movie would pan out and show a couple of native Americans sitting on a hilltop observing all this commotion. They would sit in the shade, with perhaps a day's worth of food with them. They traveled light, and because of this, they could just experience the present moment a little bit better. They could no doubt get what they needed from the land around them rather than by lugging around tons of supplies.

The last several months has involved a lot of of moving. With the Catholic Worker dismantling and people coming and going, goods donated far and wide, many things put into storage, and me moving twice, it was a seemingly constant effort moving things around from one place to another. I have boxes of unsorted personal papers and memorabilia that I have trudged from placed to place. Much of it is just random papers that I may or may not want to keep, but I have not taken the time to sort through it all.

I have felt like I was on the Lewis & Clark expedition, with all my energy inward on my stuff and barely looking around, keeping anything and everything because "I might need it someday." It was an empty, unsatisfying experience.

I have boxes and boxes of keepsakes and mementos. Some have unfinished emotional business, in some I am hanging on to the memory of loved ones, some who have passed, and in others I have stuff I would like to keep for a rainy day--I may want to re-read those old letters or show them to my kids someday.

It has gotten to the point where hauling this stuff around is affecting the quality of life in the present tense. I have had to make decisions about where I live because of it. I can not count the times I have said I would have few regrets if an "accidental" fire took this burden off of me.

I have a box of old National Geographic maps from my grandpa. We used to look through those maps in wonderful detail together, pondering places and comparing facts and figures. These were his maps. I will probably not look at those maps again that way, if I look at them at all. Even though I have sacramentalized the box of maps itself, is it not more accurate to say that it was sharing those moments together that I treasure more than the objects themselves? The box of maps itself does not bring with it what made those moments special. Why keep them?

When looking at these boxes of stuff, the glaring metaphor of emotional baggage cannot possibly go unnoticed. The real danger here is that I could think that by keeping this box of maps, I could somehow keep my grandpa, too. However, if I did have my grandpa around, I would not stuff him into a closet or a storage shed, so why would I do the same with stuff that I am clinging to as a way of clinging to him?

Some archivist might come along with a quite lovely idea--I could make a collage of these maps and put it on the wall! That would honor the memory in the best possible way while still clearing out the unnecessary clutter. It is the memory, after all, that I want to preserve, and all I need is a trigger for that. I am not trying to totally discount the object itself, because there is something about the historical artifact itself that makes me feel like I can touch those moments of the past so directly, but maybe all I need to keep is a piece of it. However, when I consider the time/effort it would take to put something together like that, I just shove the box back into the closet and figure I will deal with it another day.

I could easily devote the next several months to managing my past. I could make collages of items. I could take photos. I could sort and label photos. I have an old 1980s computer with old files I would love to have, if I could ever take the time to set it up and relearn how to use the machine again. Let's not even talk about scrapbooking.

As any hoarder will tell you: I could lose 2/3 of this stuff and never miss it. Easy.

If it were just one box of maps, I could just keep them and bring them out now and then to remember. But it is not just one little box. It is old furniture. It is broken stuff. It is boxes and boxes of unsorted piles of clutter. Plane tickets, business cards, little notes, cards and envelopes--envelopes, for crying out loud! The real downside is that keeping anything for several years turns it into an artifact. It could be a 20 year old page of ads from the newspaper, but by golly it is 20 years old and now it is precious!

This stuff legitimately does bring back memories. However, it is not like I kick back on a Saturday evening, put a pot of tea on the stove, light the fireplace and bring out one of these boxes to savor old times. No, the only time I interact with this stuff at all is when I am moving. And moving, admittedly, can either be the best or worst of times to wrap up loose ends. I often throw stuff out, but just as often I am to busy and end up just transferring it from one location to another, unchanged.

Lately, I have barely had the time or energy to do all this moving, and when I realize I am just shuffling junk from one place to another, I have finally been "moved" enough to say: Enough is enough. It is time to purge.

I had a great time driving around Columbus recently, dropping off items at various thrift stores, churches and outreach organizations. It felt so much better doing this than the drudgery of hauling boxes from one storage environment to another. The Catholic Worker movement has a history of living in the present. There is a tendency not to hold onto excess items or even money. They take what they need and give out the rest, in full faith that when they are in need later, what goes around will come back around. It was great that so many people donated to the Catholic Worker, but it is hard to justify keeping all those donations in a storage shed when they could be put to good use outside. We only stored it because it was possible we would be up and running again in a short while. When that did not happen, it became time to liquidate. So I have been liquidating both my personal stuff and the Catholic Worker belongings, too.

For so many years, I kept this stuff because it felt like a piece of me. How could I get rid of something that was a part of me? The ironic thing is that the more I have given away recently, the more I have felt like myself. That baggage was keeping me trapped in a bygone moment and preventing me from fully living into the present moment. Even when it was just sitting in a closet somewhere, its presence still weighed me down on some level of my being. I am lighter and more me than before.

I would like to think I gave away half my possessions over the past few weeks. That is an overstatement, but perhaps the good news is that it felt like half. I delivered many truckloads to Goodwill and divided appliances, furniture and other items to various people and organizations. I took many trips to the recycling bin.

The greatest horror in this is that it is darn near impossible to find a good home for used books. I have a wonderful collection of classics, spiritual works, just all sorts of great stuff. The used books stores have enough of what I have, and often they will shred the rest if they take it at all. It is certainly a sign of the decline of civilization that no one wants good used books, even when given for free. St. Stephen's Episcopal Church right in the OSU campus area operates a used book store, and they donate the proceeds to NSI, an agency that runs a free food pantry and other services for the poor. They took a lot of my stuff, and I was glad to leave it there.

It is time to go native. It is time to travel light and spend time in the present moment. It is interesting that "going native" has connotations of nakedness. It is about being more exposed, perhaps more vulnerable but also perhaps more flexible, which is a form of strength.

As for the box of maps, I think this is actually my own collection and not my grandpa's after all! So much for memory!