Sunday, May 8, 1994 - North Shore News - 7

ifessions of a closet

STRICTLY PERSONAL

ASA Zen socialist youth, |
used to sneer at people who
were “materialists.”

Afraid to look the universe in the
eye, they were! They were hiding
their beads inside muchines, inside
toys, inside their homes.:

Pathetic!

Poor souls, like indentured
slaves, getting up every moming of
their entire adult lives to chip away
at their debts.

What could they know of free-

» dom?

The entire /aissez-faire capitalist
treadmill into which they'd bought
was like some kind of voluntary
prison system, where everybody
punched in to their cells in the

~ morning and punched out at night.

’ Lives of quiet desperation,
_-inbloodydeed... -

- The whole pulsating, mysterious
‘world jay beyond, waiting to be
‘explored! And these lost materialis-
, tic beings were holed up in their lit-
“tle fortresses clinging to objects,
fashioning an identity out of things

‘ that they surrounded themselves
‘with, that they buried themselves in.

.o1, on the other hand (being the -
all-seeing young gentleman that I .
was), knew that what appeared to be

‘the physical world was really just

the Veil of Maya. Or, at feast, it ....

probably was. ...
The reat adventure in life — also
probably — was the inner journey,
Where socialism tied in, if it did
at all, was in the sense that by help-
ing others, you somehow moved

‘forward along some kind of spiritual

path.

Ithink that's why there used to
be so many evangelists involved on
the Left, and that’s why, once they
were drummed out or died off the
movement sputtered.

Anyway, that’s how it was,
Maybe I've entered my Zen
Conservative phase, or maybe I've
just gotten lost myself somewhere-

along the way, but I have quite a

‘different attitude in my 50s than |

had in my late teens and early 20s
toward the whole concept of posses-
sions.

The hu:aan mind — at least
mine -——- is capable of pulling some
amazing excuses out of the hat to
cover every contingency. So watch
out for some sneaky attempt on my
part to slip off the hook of having,
betrayed the revolution.

But I find there is an amazing
number of objects that I have
acquired along the road that 1 actu-
ally have feelings for now. At the
very least, they act as prisms for
some sort of emotional electromag-
netic spectrum.

Indeed, just the other day, I
offered my wife the theory that you
could probably calculate the number
of years a couple has been together
by the number of framed pictures in
their house.

_” You likewise might be able to do
_it on the basis of the amount of fur-
-niture. Or the number of knick-

knacks.

This notion was, of course, based
on experience.

In my case, since leaving home
as a teenager, i have lived in 2! dif-
ferent houses and apartments that I
can remember. :

It is possible, with effort, to sit
down and recall each of thesé places
in considerable detaii. Also, I have a
lot of photographs, which makes
reconstruction much easier.

There was one common denomi-

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nator to each of these dwelling
places: they filled up with stuff
awfully fast.

The “stuff wasn’t necessarily
big-ticket items like beds and sofas
and television sets and stereos.
‘There were a lot of souvenirs: a
rock from a memorable section af a
childhood stream, a snapshot of a
favorite camping spot; a cheap
wooden Buddha charm from
Chinatown; maps of cities I'd visit-
ed; a gull feather from a magical
island: the hubeap from my first car,
bus tickets from a London dou-
bledecker; train ticket stubs from

66 Poor souls, like
indentured slaves, get-
ting up every morning

of their entire adult

lives to chip away at
their debts. 99

Rome to Paris.

With cach trip, especially when
travel was a new experience, I'd
pick up more mementoes.

And more,

And more.

The treuble with life speeding by

the way it does is that you go
through a fot of experiences in a
hurry, And with modern transporta-
tion, you cover ground incredibly
quickly.

If you even so much as Iet your
hand hang open, trolling, as it were,
as you zip along, you’re bound to
scoop up quite a collection of odds
and ends.

And then, one day, you suddenly

'. sealize you need a new, bigger place

to live, just to have room for all
your souvenirs.
And clothes. And furniture. And

“books. And records, And tapes. And

paintings. And photos.

‘To say nothing of the files, The
legal documents, The albums. The
linen, The towels. The shoes. The
tools. The National Geographics.
The appliances. The drawers full of
disconnected fixtures that might be
hooked up te something in an emer-
gency someday,

And, of course, things fall apart

6

ist
and have to be replaced, but if you
are frugal you hang on to the ald
model — put it in the garage — just
in case you need a spare part some
time.

‘The next thing you know, you're

a materialist, surrounded by
things...How did it sneak up on me
like that?

ANP ADT ea ALE BE cd oa Nea to amon
mere care

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