A Different Path

Everyone who knows me knows what a borderline hoarder I am. It is difficult for me to part with anything I have once owned; this is often because of the memories I have attached to them. I own things that belonged to my mother and father and my grandmothers and my brother, not because of any intrinsic value or delight I take in them, but because of the feelings about the people who owned them, so my frail and fugitive memory never forgets them. But I have vastly more stuff that helps me remember the person I once was, the dozens of past 'selves' that are constantly evaporating behind me. Some I never want to forget, some I never want to mistakenly revive again. So I have the Archives. So I have the Hoard.

But sometimes ... sometimes I have an almost forbidden fantasy. That is of getting rid of everything, even the most personal, unrecoverable things, writing, pictures, and to fly free and unburdened into the future. It is an idea at the same time liberating and frightening. There was a time when I was me, without all these add-ons. Who would I be, if I were to return to this state? I sometimes I imagine it would take some kind of cataclysm to part me from everything. And I sometimes fancy that rather than going mad with loss, I would suddenly shout out "Free! Free!"

And more than likely, after a time, start to build up the Hoard again. Ah, me. Of course there will come a time when, will I, nill I, I must part with all these things, even down to my blood and bones. But until that time I will be bound with these worldly things. And hugging my chains fondly, even as they fall away, link by link and yard by yard. But

After long years alone,
Ironed to flesh and bone,
It is most sweet to pass
Like wind above the grass,
Free ever, and to find
The waiting mind.
Then to set forth together,
To know the new strange weather,
And where the new road leads;
To put old burdens by,
And have the wind and sky,
Light as the wild-duck's feather,
Or dandelion seeds.

 

- John Masefield