When I was in art school (1966 I think), my mother began giving me boxes of my childhood possessions that she intended to get out of her life.
I didn't much appreciate her attempts to divest herself of these last vestiges of my youth. Just because I wasn't living there didn't mean our house was no longer my primary storage space. The place where my things would always belong if I ever got so desperate as to move back home.
Now, I know how she felt. From this end of the age continuum, I get it that you can't take things with you, and sometimes people won't take 'em back. But, I want to divest myself of my overload by giving from my poor possessions to my friends. I also want people to ask for things, and I will give those things to the people who make the best case for them, in my opinion. I will post things that I want to get rid of on a reverse registry. I post what's available, you ask for what you want, and I give it to you (or a competitor with a better story or reason) during my 2010 Divestiture Tour. I'll drive it to your house, give it to you, and we'll have tea and chat.
I plan to blog about this experience while I drive around the country, divesting myself of all my excess belongings, and visiting with the lucky recipients. This will simplify my life, give me a chance to see my far flung friends, and think about the meaning of possessions, the meaning of giving them to others, and the meaning of friends.
I've never been a creative gift giver. I have a hard time figuring out what people would like to have, and at the same time I've become more aware of the importance of material things. Marx knew that material conditions dictate how well we live our lives. Most people in this world are unable to hang on to material things. Many are constrained by poverty, homelessness, wars or famine to what they can carry. The ability to keep things is a marker of class. The working classes once kept things, but commodification has devalued our possessions, making us think of them as disposable, instead of things to be taken care of, fixed, and added to the family's acquisitions. I have enough, and I'd like to redress my shabby past gift-giving ways.
So if you've read this far, I hope you will become a pin on a map, and that you will ask for something you want or let me give you something I want you to have.
Against all odds, I've held it together pretty well so far. I have my things, and my pets and friends, a place to live, a car to drive. I don't have as many of my things as I wish I had. Over the years I've gotten rid of so much by virtue of moves, and stupidly throwing good stuff away. I've lost things that can't be recovered. I eat my heart out over some of those things. I don't feel whole without them. Things like the butter dish I gave someone who asked for it because every time she saw it, it reminded her of my mother. I can't even remember who it was, only that it was someone I couldn't say no to. I wanted the dish for the same reason. But, when do I plan to be finished with the butter dish, or my other possession? I have too many things that I simply don't need anymore.
These are household things that I need less and less as time goes on. There is no one to benefit from a garage sale of my things after I'm dead, or really, to suffer the ordeal of organizing it and getting rid of a house full of my junk. I have no heirs to sick that burden on. So, I'll do as much getting rid of it as I can myself while I'm still alive to enjoy giving people stuff.
But, the best thing is that if you participate in this blog, and let me give you something and visit with you, and you write something, this is something we will all do together--me and a whole bunch of people who are mostly strangers to each other.
Your correspondent from the 2010 Divestiture Tour,
who cares?
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