Stuff

The other day, while moving, I got this feeling that a person can be understood not by their words or their actions but by their stuff. Imagine: you come into someone's home for the first and only time in your life. Perhaps it's because you're coming with mutual friend's to a Thanksgiving dinner, or you're at a distant relative of a loose friend's house for your friend's baby shower, or you're about to have a one-night stand, or you're meeting someone from Craigslist to pick up their sofa. Or so on. Whatever the reason, you're never going to see that person again, never walk in their house and see all their stuff again. And yet the amount of stuff required to sustain that person who carries barely any meaning in your life is monstrous. Each person, all of us with the means to live comfortably, have a ridiculous amount of stuff that we surround ourselves with. Some of the stuff is the same as other people's stuff - after shopping at Ikea or Bed Bath and Beyond you start to recognize commonalities among furniture sets or bathroom supplies. Some types of stuff - a bed, a table, chairs, a bookshelf, pots and pans, and so on - are in every house and every person, nearly every person, has one of their own. Even down to the computer I'm using to type this, all our stuff, all my stuff, is just a weakly personified expression of myself.

After moving to Portland I've become a little overwhelmed by the amount of inanimate things I need to live the life I want. I come to this new city and the first thing I do, before making friends or even finding a job, is find an apartment of my own to live in and start filling it with stuff, like marking my territory. The more things or mine I set up around me, the more it feels like it's really mine, like I have a right to it. Filling my refrigerator, buying a mattress and a frame, a stereo and a iPod adapter cable, a table and set of four chairs (one of which is still unassembled), soaps and shampoos and other toiletries. This acquisition of stuff has been ongoing for days and days, and it's not even finished! I still have no couch, no mat to keep the rug clean when you first walk in, no plants for the garden I plan to grow, no bed stands and no dresser, no can opener or screw driver... and so on.

I've been dealing with the question of how necessary these things are. Sure, I could live quite well without 6 glasses - I am just one person, after all. But all six have a use (and they cost a nickel each and were in used condition, so I'm not so troubled over them). In fact, I can easily justify the existence of all these things I have. I'm not a big spender. I get nervous spending money on unnecessary things, like eating at restaurants. And yet here I am spending $125 on a table when I could easily eat standing up or in bed. I know, I know, $125 isn't than much for a new table. But for the brief amount of time I lived without one I began to wonder how much I needed one in the first place. And, more importantly, if I'm living in greater comfort than I need, how much of that comfort is excessive and wasteful?

In the end, I decided I wasn't being wasteful at all. If I want to live in a world with other human beings, in a world where other human beings can come to my home and be treated with the proper care expected from a host in our culture, I need to own a variety of stuff in order for that cultural obligation to be met. If I have friends over for dinner I must have enough glasses for them all and a place for them to sit and place their dishes upon. They need the silverware to eat with and I need the cleaning materials to clean up after them (and myself). They need a place to put their purses and backpacks besides the middle of the floor.

If I wanted to live alone, keep my space off-limits from any potential friends and neighbors, then there wouldn't be a need for a table or bookshelves or sets of glasses. All of those are conveniences - it wouldn't be hard to figure out how to live without them. But that's not the life I want to live. I want to make human connections and invite people into my home, and therefore I do need this stuff to achieve that end. So that I can have friends over for a Passover Seder, and perhaps even that friend of a friend who I'll never see again, who will just have a window into me through that one night of seeing the stuff I live with.

But sometimes - oh so often right now! - it feels like much more than a reasonable amount!

P.S. The last post was post #200 for this blog. We started in Florence, went through New York University, circled around through Turkey, and have arrived here in Portland. Thanks to all my readers for paying attention to all or any of it!