Walk This Way

Walking sticks are rad. I've had one for years and years. I found it out on a walk somewhere. I wish I could remember just where. Could have been the hills behind my house at the time, could have been along the creek in Libbey Park. It's got a perfect handle crook and a nice little kick back near the bottom. My dad sanded and stained it a dark brown ages ago. It's been sitting in the corner of my room. Hell, I even took it to Arizona with me and never used it. Shocking. I took a lot of things with me I never used. Just dragging junk from place to place. Pretty silly, really.

I caught an episode of Clean House the other night where they went to the messiest house in America. It was a big 4 bedroom, two bath house with a huge basement. It took 5 huge, flatbed truck dumpsters to haul out the trash from this place. And the amount of shit they ended up keeping in storage in the basement amazed even them. Nicey had a little smack down with the family on the day of the garage sale. The family members kept dragging things they insisted on keeping over to a specific tent, and it was an obscene amount of junk. She told them if she saw them take one more thing over there that Clean House would pack everything up and leave. These people had a real sickness about their things and the hording of them. And they all blamed another family member for the state the house had gotten in.

Now, I'm a packrat with issues letting things go, but I am a far cry from the atrocities of these people, thank God. It made me feel better about my stuff and yet really motivated me to go through my crap. If it hadn't been 2 in the morning and I hadn't had to get up at 7 to go to UCLA, then I would have had at it. I keep things far after their expiration date, as it were. It's one thing to hold on to something that is meaningful for a while, and it's another to hold on to it forever. For instance I hung on to my prom corsages for far too long. It was important for me to hold on to them for a certain amount of time, but then they became relics and something I just automatically passed over when I went through my things. Sometimes it's difficult to separate the object from the memories attached to them. You can have the memories without having to have the objects. I think of what I would do or how I would feel if there was a fire and I lost everything. I would still have the memories and I could live without all of this stuff.

Backpacking through Europe really taught me how little I needed to be happy. I remember being in our hostel in Loch Ness and all I had was my journal, my CD player, my backpack and a change of clothes. And that's all I needed. I didn't miss anything that was back in my room at home. And when I look through all the things I didn't take to Arizona with me, things that sat here for three and a half years, I'm guessing I probably don't need them. Doesn't make it much easier to let go of. Not at first, at least. Out with the old, in with the new, as they say. All of these old things, their significance faded, the feelings they represented recessed…I think they can go now.

I've felt stunted, stagnant, held back. Perhaps if I clean all of this crap out I'll feel better. That was my point about the walking stick. Here is this thing I have held on to forever. If I'm going to hold on to it I should use it! So I busted it out, slapped on my Nano tuned up to the 6th Harry Potter book so I can reacquaint myself with the story before I pick up my reserved copy of the last book tonight at midnight, and headed up the sidewalk for a stroll. The click of the stick on the cement in rhythmic 4/4 timing proved quite useful to keeping my pace up. I took my usual path around the 'hood.

Use the things you have. Get rid of the crap you don't. Seems pretty simple to me. I didn't say easy.