We still cling to things

IT COMES down to ‘‘things,’’ in the end.

We spend our lives ac- cumulating that which does, or will, serve to identify us in our own particularities. And there’s more than just identity involved — it has a lot to do with security of status, too.

The wry bumper sticker says it all: ‘The one who has the most toys when he dies, wins.’”

It’s no small triumph, then, to come down to the wire in your altogether, serenely and coura- geously declaring that you, yourself, this marvellous old per- son that you have become, at last can carry who and what you are in head and heart alone, without benefit of impedimenta.

You’ve come this long way and have accepted the sum of all that living.

Not expecting much about yourself to change, now, philo- sophically speaking.

Inevitable physical deterioration will find you puffing on the hills, and being magnificently boring with your reminiscences. But you, your commitment to principles, all the important part is pretty well set in stone.

This is the time, then, when deciding on more practical premises is most therapeutic. You have a chance to shed the trapp- ings and get clean away. It doesn’t mean living like an anchorite in a -cave, just jettisoning the extras, acknowledging that simple living frees you up to be yourself at last.

What a relief.

Or is it maybe unsettling? Who-am-I time?

I wish I could say I’ve ac- complished it myself, that I’ve come away free, that this fifteenth hegira has whittled us down to bare bones. Not yet. Less en- cumbered, yes, but one still clings a bit, to things given, bought, earned,

They matter little in themselves, but represent the giver, or the oc- casion of giving. The little whitd- ed fisherman from New Brunswick; the ash-tray, long unused, but bearing a handsome outline of a frog totem; the Kokeshi dolls.

Certainty collections of memo-

- bE

ad

Eleanor Godley

THE VINTAGE YEARS

ries are less intimidating than col- fections of birds’ eggs or Dresden ladies.

Obviously there is still some distance to go to achieve the desired nitty-gritty. The blame can clearly be laid at the door of our children. Time was, one was expected to unload on to the young, starting out and up.

These revolutionary days leave us holding the well-known bag. The children speak only techno- logy and transfer their horizons to space, far beyond the limits im- posed by possession of gravy- boats and tureens.

The signal of my own callousness was the ease with which I discarded all the elaborate party equipment. At this age entertaining is an abandoned art. The spring-form pans, the massive platters, the salmon poachers — never again.

But if one is serious about casting out the superfluous, why stop at the kitchen? Why not in- clude the bookshelves?

Because it’s always been un- thinkable. The books, the pictures on the walls, they’ve always gone in toto, they’re part of life’s in- dispensable baggage, they define taste and measure breadth, don’t they?

Maybe. Until you’re old.

Then you hear the doors you’ve

Me AND STEAKS,

’ Prepared, the only way’ they sould: bes. : 2 Cover an open alderwood flame. ,

come through gently closing behind you, and you know you're not going to re-read Jose Ortega Y Gasset’s ‘‘On Love,’’ or Emer- son’s Essays, or all of Rebecca West. Keeping them is a form of sentimentality, not a brave seeking after the secret of life. They’ve become icons, in a way.

The line’s been crossed.

Some of mine refused to comp- ly. Alice in Wonderland just wouldn’t let go; The Chrysanthe- mum and the Sword may have something more to say in these times of Japan’s revitalization: Alice Munro, well, she sees very clearly and one can surely learn from that even now, maybe even better now. And Man’s Fate? and The March of Folly? They just might possibly need ripeness of years to get at the whole message.

As for the art, it remains intact, no weeding contemplated. It’s all here, in the new place, waiting for yet another hanging, to catch a different cast of light.

Detaching is a tough process.

Sunday, March 1, 1992 - North Shore News

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