the assemblage of treasure and scrap

If there's one thing I truly suck at, it's physical organization. I am egregiously handicapped when it comes to sorting and making decisions about objects. If there is a Special Olympics sort of event, or a government issued card I can stick on my rearview mirror to mitigate my retardation in this area, consider my hand officially raised.

Yesterday I bought two books to help me navigate the chaos and clutter in my immediate midst. One book I gave to my husband (also moderately afflicted with the handicap), and the other, well, as you can see it's sitting under my mug of coffee (I know it looks like wine, but, I pinky-dog swear, it really is coffee). The problem is, I don't know where to start. I get all anxious and paralysis sets in, and then I start to hyperventilate. Sounds like a Hoarders case, yes?

I want to, you know, "space clear." Get rid of the bad, stagnant energy and whatnot. Shred useless, outdated documents. Restore my chi. (Or is it qi--I guess I need to excavate the fucking book and find out.)

For the past few months, when not trotting around Europe, we've been in that semi-homeless limbo known as remodeling hell. Our kitchen, dining room and living room -- the central thoroughfare of our lives -- have been off-limits. I've been brewing coffee next to the toilet. Washing dishes in the laundry slop sink. Chopping tomatoes and buttering toast on the dryer. I don't know about you, but when the food part of my routine goes awry for any length of time, it becomes this systemic hell. It's a Maslow thing, right? Food is pretty essential. Consequently, my chi (or qi) is out of whack.

The remodel is just about finished now, and all this week I've been peeking in the bins and boxes I packed up in early June. I've been trying to sort stuff; move the essentials back into their drawers. Which sounds simple and glorious, right? I get to put my kitchen back together! Use a proper cutting board on a solid surface. Alas, would that it were so. This afternoon I stood in front of two Rubbermaid bins completely paralyzed with options. Should I put that grater in the Goodwill box? Or maybe it should be ferried back upstairs to the kitchen and be placed a drawer that I've yet to earmark for such a tool. Or, perhaps I should toss it into the bin for tomorrow's yard sale? Well, that depends on how many graters we actually have. I mean, is this the grater from Kirk's VW camper? Is it our extra grater? And don't we use a Cusinart for grating these days? You'd think I was a husband from the 50's faced with a dead wife and no history of performing simple kitchen tasks.

The anti-clutter book I gave Kirk had this tagline commanding the reader to throw away 50 things. Would this grater be one of the 50 things? Should it be? Okay, move on to the turkey lacing skewers. Hm. And like that. All day long.

I really wish I was a pot-smoker. I think I could probably blaze this conundrum into the vapors of "whatever."

The darker issue here is this fear that my affliction -- the glacial pace with which I attend these sorts of chores -- is only going to become more pronounced as I age. Perhaps I am staring into my future, when I will one day hold a toothbrush in one hand, toothpaste in the other, and try to recall how they go together, and what to do with them once they're joined.

The problem is, of course, we simply have too much crap, us blended boomers. Crates and barrels and bins of sentimental detritus that we should clearly jettison. Or hire someone to jettison for us, lest we get sucked into the nostalgia of things such as a child's kindergarten masterpiece or a Mother's Day ashtray made sixteen years ago (maybe I will take up pot smoking after all! Let's save it, just in case!)

How about you? Are you as organized as a German engineer, or are you headed for your own starring role Hoarders?

stuff

I hate shopping. I am a bad, anxious shopper. Malls make me go all deer-in-the-headlights, and I do my best to avoid them in December.

Now, I can handle the lull and herbal tea of a classy boutique. Or the endless tasting parties at, say Trader Joes or New Seasons. Got chocolate? I'm there. But when you have kids, the call of the Big Box Store is all too ubiquitous.

When my youngest was a toddler, he liked nothing more than to stack all of his toys in a tsunami swell of stuff. I think it grounded him to bear witness to the sum total of his terrestrial stock--but even more, repeating the tasks of acquisition seemed to nurse an addiction. He was a little hamster wheel of need with the stacking and locating of his crap. Which, in a two-year-old is sort of cute, yes?

But in a 70-year-old, that behavior is less so.

The other day I was treated to an episode (#46: Ron/Carol) of Hoarders, featuring my ex-husband's uncle--yup, that would be the great uncle of that little guy you see in the picture above. I watched with interest, and then revulsion and sorrow as the subject, Ron, led the Hoarders crew through his stockpiled ramshackle abode. Books, papers, collectibles, knick-knacks, were all precariously heaved into chest-high hills with no pathway between them. A burner left on for heat sent a flame within inches of the combustibles. His "bed" was a mattress atop a makeshift loft that bowed downward, onto metal debris, ready to crack any minute.

But that wasn't the worst part.

Ron--who has an advanced form of prostate cancer, it should be noted-- was confronted by his only child, my ex-husband's cousin, who led the Hoarders intervention. Ron's inability to be accountable for the havoc his hoarding caused in his primary relationships was excruciating to witness. The denial. The stubbornness. It was the end-stage of the behaviors I struggled to understand in my ex husband, and ones that are all too genetically wired into my son.

The older I get, the more evidence I collect for the theory that living is simply a set of practices, one after the other. Intention starts the ball rolling, but it's only a spark. A tiny catalyst. It's the actions that ensue that make or break a life. The things a person does, repeatedly, are the only concrete clues we have to their personhood.

In the Hoarders show, it ended with Ron putting an arm around his daughter. Placating her, yes, but offering the only gesture of comfort he knew how to dole out. He was a man comfortable with himself, unwilling to change, and not entirely without introspection. He'd convinced himself that his patterns were indelible. His prostate cancer has spread to his brain, I heard. Brain cancer is a pretty undignified way to go out--but I have to say, no less undignified than being buried beneath piles of treasure.