OooooOoooooh Sybil. So many blogs in so few days. Almost as if you had been writing them for the past year. With three mugs of coffee gurgling inside me, I’m ready to play catch up.
Cluttered thoughts…
A wild woman once told me: “Do not accumulate possessions. Clutter, mortgages, cars- these things hold you captive.”
And I obeyed for ten years.
I squeezed all my precious stuff into a rucksack. With every journey and new home, hard-working possessions were coldly discarded. A surfboard sold for ten dollars to a chocolate coloured boy on a Costa Rican beach. Bursting clothes bags left on the street in Madrid found a new home with sharp-eyed Spaniards. I shared my zeal for freedom with a travel mate in Panama City and we exchanged our camping mats and heavy sleeping bags for multi-coloured hammocks.
However, on every journey, memories settled into a few possessions and the nostalgia insisted on travelling with me. Adventurous volcanic stones, dancing Belgian beer glasses, a broken hearted paper plane, proud, battered Spanish novels- I wrapped up these memories and tucked them away safely in Rossnowlagh.
Recently, something changed. My once reliable rucksack snuck out for orgies with Argos and Ikea. The shamed bag burst its seams and spawned clutter of all sorts. Poundshop clutter, borrowed clutter, family heirloom clutter. Blow-up beds mingled with Waterford crystal. Nan’s Donegal tweed cosied up to Pennys’ knickers. Another move was predicted and the rucksack proved to be woefully inadequate. A van and two flights dragged the clutter mountain to Ireland.
Now, I look around at the precious possessions demanding attention, dusting and love. I decide to give up a little bit of freedom and settle down to another mug of coffee with memories rising freely from the clutter, instead of packed away gathering dust.
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1 comment:
The unkindness of it, Fairypoo. Just as I brace myself to attack the accumulated memories and associated clutter, you go celebrating clutter.
On the other hand, you have shed so much clutter across the globe that you have learned to cherish the little that is left.
So maybe if I pack a very large bag and set off next Wednesday on the 3pm Transiberian Express, I could shed clutter at every stop along the way and arrive in Mongolia empty handed, freed spiritually and materially from the burden of posession.
Well, Wednesday week, maybe. I need time to pack.
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