Knick Knack Nostalgia

A guy from Craig's List is coming tomorrow morning to purchase and cart-off my bookshelves, and I should be happy about it. I'm not. He is paying me for the bookshelves that I decided to sell, yet I feel as if he's taking them from me. Like I'm a debtor handing them over with reluctance to the person who's collecting my debt.

I think this anxiousness comes from my next move coming up in just 2 short weeks. This will be my 8th move in 8 years. Quite a track record. When I moved to New York, I sold about 75% of the stuff that I owned, and that 75% that I did have was exactly 50% of the stuff that I used to own. At one point I had a home that looked like it was straight out of a Pottery Barn catalogue. It actually was. I believe 85% of the possessions in the home were Pottery Barn. And although I believe I am a more interesting, eclectic kind of person than someone who has a house furnished with 85% Pottery Barn, the fact is that at one point in my life, I had a really nice, beautiful place to call 'home.'

I like the idea, and the practice, of living minimally. But, the truth is that I am too nostalgic of a person to do so. I am selling these coffee-colored bookshelves tomorrow, but what about the Harvard books that I bought to decorate them? I remember being in that bookstore, full of excitement as I furnished my first home. What about the canisters that I got in Maui that are hand-etched? The teapot from India that I picked up as I strolled through the dusty, mountain streets of Darjeeling? The gemstone rock that I got on a road trip during a season of my life when I needed to be reminded that sometimes, things don't look like much on the outside, but have jewels of tremendous beauty on the inside. What about that? Although those things are just 'stuff,' that 'stuff' is a part of me. It's been a part of a journey and I can't seem to let it go.

I realize this is totally an impractical emotion, living in a New York apartment. There is no space, and I'm about to decrease my bedroom by 50% with this next move. I rolled up to Washington Pl. last year with a 14 and 1/2 foot U-haul truck that I had driven by myself cross-country. Somehow, very carefully, I managed to pack it all in. But with each move comes a cleansing, and although I believe that simplifying life is an act of cleansing, it sometimes still brings a sadness to me.

In my mind I romanticize the idea of giving it all up and only keeping one suitcase filled with what I need to take off and travel the globe for 2 years with what I can carry on my back. That thought is great in theory, and maybe in the realities of some in this world, but not in mine.

Maybe a girl can have it all. I can de-clutter, simplify, know that there will be a time in the future again when I will truly have a space of my own... a space to breathe, to rest, to furnish... But, until then, climate controlled storage will have to do.