Trash

So more thoughts on too much stuff. I helped my friend move the other day. At the end, just a few hours before she had to be at the airport, she still had tons of stuff strewn about her apartment. That's the point in most of the moves I've made where I get out the garbage bags. All the things that I couldn't bear to throw away before and yet didn't have a place get unceremoniously dumped into the trash once the deadline approaches. Nothing like a deadline and the threat of a heavy fine from the landlord to clarify decisions about what is trash and what is a treasure.

Alas, now a lot of her trash/treasure is now in my house. It's very cool stuff. Definitely more treasure than trash. And had I come across most of it at a hip and trendy little store, I probably would have been willing to fork over good cold cash for it.

That's the odd thing here, and the thing that is somewhat difficult to articulate. The thing that you're willing to pay $30 dollars for will soon, or not so soon transform into junk. Not that anything about it really changes. It's just that your relationship to it changes. And then try to give that thing away, really. It'll probably be almost impossible.

I've been reading about Hoarding as it's defined as a psychological disorder. They say that the main thing that makes hoarders pile stuff up around themselves until they can't move is that the that someday they might need this thing. Or someone else might need it. And once you throw the thing away, it's gone, forever.

But they also say that "hoarders" actually are surrounded by so much stuff that often they can't find the thing they need when they need it. Or their brains are so crowded by the junk that they can't remember that they have the thing they need.

I keep having this reoccuring dream about living in an art gallery. Nothing on the floors, nothing on the walls but beautiful stark black and white photos. There must be a message in here somewhere.