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Total entries in this category: 51
Published On: Mar 07, 2006 03:02 PM
Total entries in this category: 51
Published On: Mar 07, 2006 03:02 PM
If you lived here, you'd be home now
In a week, Deb and I are leaving for a year in
China.
We've renting out our house and we're now in the
thick of packing away all of the things that our tenants won't use. So our
clothes and our pictures and our books are all going in boxes and getting
stuffed out of the way, into the attic and the
garage.
What we're doing is anonymizing our house. It'll still be ours - we're not selling it after all - but for a year we'll be surrendering it to another family. Until next August, we won't even be able to come back here. What we'll have until then is not really a home, but more like the idea of a home. It's the first step in giving up our regular life - and I'm surprised to find it feels refreshing.
One of my favorite short stories is "Man Eating Cats." There is a section that I think of now, as we pack away all of our daily artifacts:
That seems like a good place to start.
What we're doing is anonymizing our house. It'll still be ours - we're not selling it after all - but for a year we'll be surrendering it to another family. Until next August, we won't even be able to come back here. What we'll have until then is not really a home, but more like the idea of a home. It's the first step in giving up our regular life - and I'm surprised to find it feels refreshing.
One of my favorite short stories is "Man Eating Cats." There is a section that I think of now, as we pack away all of our daily artifacts:
Once you make up your mind to get rid of something, there's very little you can't discard. No - not very little. Once you put your mind to it, there's nothing you can't get rid of. And once you start tossing things out, you find yourself wanting to get rid of everything. It's as if you'd gambled away almost all your money and decided, What the hell, I'll bet what's left. Too much trouble to cling to the rest.
That seems like a good place to start.
Posted: Mon - August 18, 2003 at 03:14 PM