In September 2002, I made the decision to move from California to Australia to live with my partner, and by December I was flying to Melbourne. In just two months, I packed up or got rid of all my material possessions.
As forty-one-year-old middle-class Americans go, I had relatively few belongings, but packing was unpleasant and seemed interminable. By mid-November I was working some sixty hours a week on the move, yet I saw no progress. In fact, my belongings seemed to be expanding.
And worse, no one could help me: I alone had to consider every object in my possession, from safety pins to automobiles, from furniture to love letters, from dream catchers to filing cabinets, from fishnet stockings to special rocks. I had to think about and handle every sock, every old toothbrush (kept for cleaning silver), every piece of paper fallen behind the desk. I found endless, useless, redundant junk: Plastic Mardi Gras beads. (I’ve never been to Mardi Gras.) A couple of eyeglass-repair kits. (I don’t wear glasses.) Dozens of paper napkins I never bought. Cat toys my cats never played with. Two (!) complete works of Shakespeare. Angela, my doll from 1963. A couple of hits of mescaline — enshrined since the early eighties in plastic wrap, inside tinfoil, inside cardboard — and a bag of pot, at least eight years old, kept for guests.
