The Barn, ii

I stopped worrying about the feelings of inanimate objects long ago.

Despite past accumulations, most now purged, I've never actually been
terribly sentimental. When I put boxes of things up in the attic of
the garage at age 10, I felt guilty and horrible for relegating gifts
from people I loved to an existence crammed with other pieces of crap
in cardboard that I couldn't bear to send to Goodwill. I didn't like
hurting the feelings of those hideous or strange objects but at some
point in my life I learned that it is more selfish to keep what you
don't want/appreciate than it is to send it back into the universe to
be used more purposefully. Whether it's recycling handmade gifts or
putting Grandma's black & yellow sweater with STARS on it in the
Goodwill bin, the items get put back into the universe's grand
exercise of rotation...instead of choking the life out of everything
around them.

I think even as a child, I was considering objects in terms I still do
today (though now I have to sift through years of complicated
reasoning processes to determine the bottom line.) I think I've
always seen myself as some sort of observer or storyteller, a 3rd
party perhaps, to most of my own life's experiences. I have believed
that the presentation of a well timed prop can truly make a tale
unforgettable. There have been occasions where I've pulled out a
letter or a photo and believed that the act of doing so engineered
something valuable. What I've learned from these occasions is that
the story I tell when I reveal my "hand" is not my story. By saving
these artifacts, I am distracting myself from understanding and
accepting details from my own story.

So, these days, I think a lot about the story I speak in the things I
keep, carry and reveal. I worry about my legacy and whether it is
both gentle and clear enough to be either relevant...or negligible
Either is really quite fine.

It is less difficult now to think about my "footprint" knowing that,
should I be so fortunate, my children will have to bear whatever
legacy I leave. I have choices in this process and I want to be more
deliberate with how I manage what stands to be inherited. From
material assets to ideological ones, I need to be more intentional
with my choices.

All this, so far, to simply say that what stands in my way of "seeing
the moon" stands in my kids' way too. I need to make the way clear,
certainly for myself, but more importantly, for them.