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Stuff & Space


I've been thinking a lot about my own personal property, lately; my stuff. I own a lot of stuff. I have space for all of my stuff. I have so much space for my stuff, that I can't see all of my stuff by simply turning my head from side to side. I have multiple floors, multiple rooms, multiple closets and cabinets and corners. I have a lot of furniture. I have a lot of space. I have stuff and space. Most of my stuff is worth very little; much of it is entirely unnecessary. I don't need the big Kitchenaid stand mixer, with four attachments; I can get away with a bowl and wooden spoon. I don't need all this stemware and a dozen Tervis tumblers; I need a single plastic cup, to hand wash between uses. Do I need television? Not at all. I don't need a laptop. I don't need a cell phone. I don't need a microwave. I don't need a "fancy" bedroom set. I don't need crystal vases; I can slice the tops off empty plastic milk jugs, if I want to keep fresh flowers. I don't need all of these lamps. I don't need a Roomba. I don't need a car, as long as I'm willing to walk unknown distances, at the mercy of the elements, and wait for a bus that will probably be late, and take twice as long to get me to my destination than it would take if I were driving. (This can go on indefinitely, so I'll just stop right here.)

A lot of my stuff was given to me: chachkies, appliances, furniture. Some of my furniture was salvaged from the side of the road. Then, there's stuff that I own for the soul purpose of housing stuff. Several items in all of this stuff, exist in my home because they have sentimental value. I enjoy looking at those things. They make me happy, but I don't need them. By and large, my stuff does not make me happy. If anything, they make me miserable because I've gotten to the point where I feel like I need them. I've felt trapped everywhere I've ever lived, because of my stuff. My stuff is like silent, motionless, fairly self-sufficient, responsible children -- much loved and relatively easy to maintain, but they still need maintenance and maintenance ain't free on any level.

 
So...where do we get the money for all of this stuff and space if what we earn isn't enough? We borrow. What happens when we borrow? We become indebted; we become slaves. I am dead fucking tired of being a slave. For so many years, I've known friends and co-workers and random acquaintances, who take long vacations to exotic places on an annual basis, for weeks at a time; people who don't make any more money than I do. It used to drive me nuts. How the heck do they do it? I only just came across the answer: they don't have stuff and space (or, at least, a lot of it); they don't have it, need it or even care about it. It got me thinking about what it is that I really want. What I want is fairly simple. I want love, peace and quiet. Love comes from luck, peace comes from within, quiet comes from geography. Shit, I have quiet now, but I pay out the ass for it. I'm certain I can buy or rent acreage in rural Mississippi for next to nothing. Do I want to live there? Actually, now that I put it in writing, I don't even know the answer. Maybe? It certainly would be cheap. I'd be isolated from loved ones, but I already have been for years. I have made one or two real friends down here in almost 9 years. My next real friend is almost 200 miles away. Everyone else is no less than 1,000 miles away. I hate it, but I'm used to it.

 
My immediate concern is being able to afford reasonable comfort in a location that might foster geographical contentment. I had a bit on an "episode" yesterday (I won't go into what set it off), but I found myself sitting on the couch, with no external stimuli, staring off into space and basically thinking, "what the fuck?" for couple of hours. I mean, really, what fuck? We don't belong anywhere, so let's move somewhere. Can't do cold again. I need heat, ocean and palm trees. SoCal? Are there still affordable cities/towns by the ocean in SoCal? I got on the Google and, holy shit, there are. Holy shit, I could live in SoCal for probably less than it costs to live here. There's your geography.

 
I already have love.

 
I don't have peace. I've chased peace through three different states and landed in Paradise. I feel no peace in Paradise. It's pretty fucked up. So I have stuff and space and quiet and love, but no peace. The older I get, the more basic my desires get and the less ambition I have. Love/peace/quiet (say it as a single word) is my dream; it's universal. We were talking about the American Dream. I couldn't give a fuck about the American Dream. The American Dream doesn't exist anymore; it hasn't for at least two decades. Reality rolled off the bed and awoke with a thud. Once upon a time, a body could be birthed (what Bobcat Goldthwaite once referred to as the "Play-Doh Fun Factory of Life"), be left in a basket on a doorstep, and grow up to be a millionaire. All it took was ambition and relentless hard work. We well know that people assume such possibilities are still wide open to them. We well know that they are living a lazy lie. If you're born poor, you're fucked. You have a chance of moderate success, if you came up middle-class; even great success. If you're born poor, you're fucked for life, unless you have some sort of marketable quality and the right person notices it at the right time. I'm just being realistic. I am cynical, yes, but cynics are just realists that used to be idealists. We've seen too much suckage to be anything else. I'd like to say that class is an illusion, but I'd be lying to myself if I believed it. I'd like to say that I don't sometimes fantasize about being in the upper echelon, but come on. How cool would it be to drink a $200 bottle of wine, while soaking naked in your screened-in hot tub, staring up at Cassiopeia, amidst a few scattered phosphorescent clouds, that offer a reminder of the depth of space? How cool would it be to swim a few laps in your own pool, as the sun rises? Jet off to Paris for a long weekend at a moment's notice? The house on that private island you own - the one you haven't set foot in for two years - is always dust-free, the garden alive, because you have a crew in once a month, when you're not there.

Dave put forth to me not too long ago that we are among those who strive to keep up with the Joneses. I thought we were beyond that, but I suppose our stuff and space speaks otherwise.

So, here's how I now see class: you have the destitute; you have the chill factor; those of us who struggle to keep up with the Joneses; the actual Joneses; those the Joneses strive to be; and Trump, who would willingly bleed pus, as long as he's the direct boss of the Joneses and, basically, emperor of all he surveys. I don't know if I believe that most people care about having the last two (or even three). I know people like stuff. Some care about space and some dig the idea of living in a million dollar RV, so they can roam at will in luxury. I'm no longer certain of what my ideal is. I have too much stuff, but there's plenty of space.



 

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