Wading through all my belongings for the fourth time since returning from abroad, I am delighted to note that the amount of stuff I own has been drastically reduced. Bags of unworn clothes, unwieldly souvenirs or habitually carried around pieces of furniture have not survived one of my moves lately, and packing up my belongings once again for a longer period, I am confident that before Wednesday the merciless cheese slicer of my new found and self-induced material simplicity has shaved off another reasonable chunk of junk.But how to assess what should stay or go? It seems a task that should not be carried out lightly. With their intricate connection to past events, all possessions seem to inherit emotional value tying them to particular moods, periods, people and locations. Would a lack of tact in ditching leave a feeling comparable to memory loss?
In my personal experience, irretrievable items can cause a trauma that isn't easily overcome. My wonderfully comfy brown woollen sweater was nicked in a rowdy Barney's in Port Elizabeth right when it seemed that North-Korea was able to pull a stunt against Brazil. Its loss manifested itself several times during the freezing winter week, but also afterwards, when my return to the North had asserted its climatic consequences. I still miss that sweater.
That said, this item was one that was taken from me without my consent. Departing from an item on my own accord seems a different matter altogether. It might have to do with the time given to prepare for the final goodbye, or it might simply be that the chucked items up till now have been considered carefully on their emotional impact, but I cannot recall now one single item I regret having binned.
With the sheer unlimited digital storage space, we no longer have to throw away photographs or physically keep them, which has left my photo book collection a constant. Furthermore I have discovered the merits of digitizing paperwork, so all my old university reader have been scanned and stored on year, course and author: way easier to go through and far less bulky and heavy.
Furniture can be bought and resold easily via the popular websites, which leaves only two main groups of possessions that will fill the lions share of the storage needed for my gear: clothes and books. My clothing collection has gone through some critical reviews over the years and even though new items are purchased every now and again, slims through the years.
The only items I cant seem to approach light-heartedly or rationally is my 3-box set of books. There must over a 100 books in there that, from the moment I moved out, have witnessed every bookshelf I have had, without ever being read. There are books in there that I loved reading, will not read again for the next 20 years, and will not lend to friends since they're too precious to me.
But that's the sacrifice I'm willing to make for art. Their presence soothes me when on a grey day I lose faith in mankind or when I can fall asleep on a warm summer night. Then I glance over the covers with names that bring back worlds: spending
Christmas with Vikram Seth, simultaneously lounging on a Cambodian beach and crossing a flooded street in Bengal during the monsoons. Or to experience a Parisian pre-spring in a municipal bus with Mark Haddon's poem putting to words the always unconsciously felt truth that the life of a tree is superior to my own.
If words on covers release such power of focused reminiscence, the promise of much more of those words is enough for me to cherish them. So, with an ever-growing book collection, my further minimalism might be in vain. Or, more functionally put, it might well simply be a necessity.
