Some nice clouds and brilliant sun came to visit me at my new apartment yesterday, while I waited for the cable young man.  Thank goodness he was late.  It was such a relief to have nothing to do except wait and send emails and look around.

The kind of tired I am is like nothing I can remember experiencing before.  This tired is a bone-deep discouragement.  Every single thing I pack is a gesture of futility – I know I can’t keep most of it and live comfortably in my new circumstances, but there just isn’t enough time left to sift and choose.   It’s exhausting to keep my body engaged in doing what my mind knows is impossible.  Downsize and move 8 years of living into 20 percent of the space, in 8 weeks?  I can get myself to keep moving just 5 minutes at a time – so I set my timer and work for 5 minutes.  A couple of days ago, all I could manage was to work for 5 minutes, then rest for 5 minutes – so that’s what I did.  It might sound unproductive but I got a lot more done that way than if I had just sat on the couch and cried.

I suppose this is what battling perfectionism looks like.  It doesn’t matter what the right way to organize and pack is.  It’s just as useful to continue to do everything wrong – to persist in making this huge, impossible, unmanageable mistake.  As long as I keep moving.

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Happy Valentines Day.  I love you!

There is nothing on my mind right now so strongly as my mind itself.  The thoughts and intentions – I can resell this, I can collage this, I can arrange this – that filled my imagination and my shelves with books and props and sheaves of prints now fill my heart with regret.  But the regret does nothing to break the attachment.  You know what I mean.  Regret tends to make attachment more miserable.  It’s a way of indulging yet another fantasy – that I didn’t want to do what I did, or that somehow I can still repair the past.

The funny thing is – I wish I could get rid of these things (most of them).  I really, really do.  But I keep thinking I have to try to rescue some of the money I spent on them, because if I admit that I never can, the waste will just seem almost tragic – given my current predicament.

Its a puzzle without a solution.  In fact, the solution is to stop trying.  Which is hard.  The hardest part of all.

My mother moved.  San Francisco, Chicago, Indianapolis, Salt Lake City, Bulington, Madison, Verona.  Possessed of an impervious faith that relocating her art supplies and rickety wicker dresser to an unfamiliar apartment would improve her life, she seemed equally impervious to the fresh difficulties each move created for her – social isolation, penurious financial limitations, strains on her failing health.  Who wouldn’t watch this cycle repeat and try to learn the lesson?  Happiness is where you ARE, Dorothy.

But now it’s my turn.  I want something DIFFERENT.  And changing – though hard – feels very, very good.  It feels like life happening, and I am playing my part.

This is what she wanted.  I see it much more clearly now.  And we are moving on.

Today I won’t have much time to write.  The boxes are waiting for me to fill and unfill, and possibly stub a toe upon (but nothing serious.)

Here we see some silk flowers – Mom’s signature touch. Improbable conglomerations of impossible blooms squeezed in baskets, displayed on every empty surface with an almost defiant declaration -“Prettiness!” These flowers have also been waiting for me, in a bag in my storage room.  For five years I have been mulling over images I could make with them, to bring them to life, and make them Real through Love.

Why should I be surprised when I find that no such elaborations were necessary?  I had only to look in the bag, and there it was – a talisman so beautiful and Real and resonating with all the hope she never, never lost.

By 6 a.m. this morning, I was prying books from my main book shelf, which has served as hearth and archive for 8 years.   The task may seem impossible, given the time frame of moving on February 28: pick out ONLY the treasures, and bring just what I need to live happily in a bedroom.   This means fewer books.  Mostly, not very many books.  In fact, hardly any books at all.

At first, it was reassuring to realize I could easily hear the voices of the real friends – the books I truly love – above the noise of words that have simply drifted into my life (which can drift back to the library sale from whence they likely came).  At first, this clear intuitive sense of connection calmed me down, and gave me hope for rolling my boulder up the hill.  But then, I turned my attention to letting go of the vintage children’s books.

People have often thought I was joking when they ask what kind of books I like to read, and I answer that I only like books with pictures in them.  But mostly, I am not kidding.  There’s quite a stack in this bookcase alone – let’s say 2 dozen.  Pete and the Mouse, The Mittens, Romany Free, I Went to the Market – carefully winnowed from library sales and thrift stores based solely on the quality illustrations.  It means a lot to me to imagine that I can re-sell these books online to another collector or artist who will bless the Color Kitten’s and Bill Dugan’s Busy Town as much as I do.  It means a lot to me to know I can spot a special illustrator.  Here is what it means:

My ability to discern a unique visual voice matters to someone.  My special talent for distinguishing how form and color and line speak has been noticed.  And I am so lonely for recognition of my own voice that the best I can imagine is to show people the beautiful things others have made.

But, standing in the kitchen, pouring cream into my third decaf, (it’s 8:32 am – you do the math), I heard the voice say, “What you want is ART, and the books are your way of getting it.”  And of course, I started to cry.

How people made the pictures in books – of fairies and castles and hedgehogs in waistcoats – and how I could make such good pictures, too – was a puzzle that worked its way into my most secret heart as a child – a problem I didn’t dare let anyone know I wanted to solve.  Surrounded by painting and drawing, I knew I would fail to do what grown up artists could do.  And I knew from experience that adult artists didn’t really like it when I said, “Show me how…”

And you know, that is not a problem that more room, or more money can solve.  Neither can any number of whimsical pictures encased in hard board and hidden away from my envy-hungry eyes give me what I need.  Until I let myself know how much it matters to me to see my own pictures take shape, I can sift through images others have made, piling up page after page, and still not solve the mystery – for I am searching for a secret that only I can tell.

“Auugh!”
             – Charlie Brown

Given how tangled up my physical belongings are with both my emotional and spiritual life (which all gets funneled through my camera, in case I hadn’t noticed), it makes sense that writing about downsizing will be a murky process – so bear with me.

There is a modest abundance of objects in my home unclouded by psychic storms.  I own them with pure love and remorseless attachment.  My grandmother’s Delft pitcher, my butterfly quilt, the greyhounds Karen knitted me, my collection of porcelain hands – to me, these things are unambiguously wonderful and necessary to life.

The inventory of uncluttered attachments is a very brief compared to what lies in my closet, on my shelves and in my basement storage locker.

Shoeboxes of vintage greeting cards to make into baskets; yards of vintage fabric to resell online; velvet leaves and beads and buttons for garlands and necklaces – layers carefully, even pleasingly arranged, waiting to be worked on and created with – all accumulating into a great big ZERO.  Just imagining the unfulfilled intentions attached to a majority of things in my home makes my palms sweat and my heart shrivel.   I stand in their accusatory presence, already judged:  a money-wasting, time-wasting fraud – unable (or unwilling) to bring more than a gasp of half-hearted effort to fulfilling the visions that brought them here in the first place.

Busted.  Caught in the act.  All these dormant desires prove how lazy, weak and self-involved I am.  A dreamer, not a doer, right?  A starter, not a finisher?  A dilettante, not a real artist?

Considering how bad this stuff makes me feel – YOU’D THINK THAT I COULDN’T WAIT TO GET RID OF IT! 

BUT…say it with me, Steve Martin fans…NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!  

Instead, I feel compelled to keep these pointing fingers around me, like a self-imposed scarlet A ( standing for Absolutely Not An Artist.)  I tell myself:  If I sell some of this fabric or old wrapping paper, that will make it alright that I spent the money.  I ruminate:  If I give away the vintage greeting cards, and I want to make Christmas card baskets, I won’t have money to replace them.  I ponder:  If I don’t keep the buttons, how will I ever make the button-tree forest I see in my mind?

I hesitate, too paralyzed with guilt to step into the jaws of the guilt-breathing dragon, and face my remorse.  Yet, that is the only way to save the brave Princess – and rehabilitate the dragon.

A tricky spot, to be sure, but – it bears pointing out – FAMILIAR.  Once identified, there are 2 things I can say for sure about this situation.

1) It requires action, not thinking.
2) I CAN DO IT.

After my last post – twooooo weeeeeks agooooo – my friend sent me this message:

“What is the secret to parting with possessions? I can’t wrap my brain around it, yet I desperately need to purge. Where do I start when each thing I touch has memories associated with it?”

Oh friend, you tell the entire dilemma in a few dozen words.  I have intended to reply so many times, but I fell prey to the urgency of my moving deadline, rather than doing the most important thing first – which is to WRITE.

But your question has never been far from my thoughts, asking itself over and over again – What is the secret?  Where do I start?  Because truly, I, too, have absolutely no idea how to limit the material of my life to an 11 x 14 bedroom without breaking my own heart.

And so, my perceptive friend, here is the only secret I can tell you about parting with things that you think you need and believe you love:

It’s gonna hurt.  It’s gonna make you anxious.  And that’s why you have to do it.

We are ATTACHED to our things, and SEVERING attachment is PAINFUL.  Why should those of us whose affectionate impulses are magnetized by physical symbols feel ashamed that we love and gather objects in order to feel whole, loved, remembered?  Attachment is what human beings are built for!  Loving your things, even clinging to them, isn’t wrong.  What’s wrong is thinking it should be easy, or painless to turn your back on those affections.  Only you know if you are ready to face what it means to let go.  Only you can decide whether freedom from attachment has become more precious to you than protecting yourself from the pain and fear of letting go.

I am determined to teach myself to act despite my fears.  Letting go of a life built around preserving so many things is a concrete way for me to practice.  But it isn’t fun, and I am nowhere near the end of saying goodbye.

Wading through things and thoughts without writing the words was a MISTAKE.  You offered me a lifeline, friend, with your eloquent question – and finally, I am reaching out to take it.  More, tomorrow.

Love, B

Since Christmas I have focussed almost all my time examining thousands of my possessions – taking pains with each one – and saying good bye to as many as I can stand.  And lest you suspect “thousands” of being an exaggeration, just remember this…I like paper.  Paper and books.

The idea is  to cut my expenses by moving in with a roommate.  It would be great if that part of the plan works.  Chances are high that I am trading away the sweetest home I ever needed for uncertainties and disappointments. But I think I am just tired of feeling stuck, and so onward I race, flying pell mell over the cliff, Thelma and Louise all rolled into one caffeine-fuelled, menopausal package.

Anyway, extracting the truly  precious possessions from the momentarily dazzling has engaged my emotional energy beyond the point where enough is remains for writing and picturing.  This image is left over from early spring at Olbrich Gardens, looking up into the trees that sheltered our bench – Mom’s and mine.  Its a souvenir from a place where I could  tell myself, “I did not see that coming.”

Merry Christmas forever.  We are as connected today as if we were home together, because distance in miles and time, it turns out, means nothing to the hearts that love us.  And I love you