So here we are WigStylers, back in my hometown. I mean, home village. It’s been a manic few days, what with my travelling by train or car hundreds of miles to the three corners of the UK (Sheffield, London, Hereford) to meet important people, give presentations, pack all my belongings and move house.
In the past 24 hours I’ve given away at least half of all of my worldy stuff. I find it has to be done in stages. On the first day I can only dispose of those things that I have no emotional attachment to and have no use for, but by day three I’m giving away things I’ve had for years, presents from friends and family, valuable stuff that I could use but would cost too much to send to Japan.
It hurts to part with some of these things, but I think it’s healthy. I don’t want to be dependent upon ‘stuff’ for happiness in life. All of these belongings will find new homes thanks to the local charity shops.
The remaining three boxes await Yamato Kuro Neko (Japan’s No.1 courier which also has an office in the UK, Tel 01753 657 688) who will come and pick them up to Ship to Japan at the end of the month (£50 for a 25kg box by surface mail, £80 by airmail).
It’s good to have left Broad Lane Court. I feel I’m able to get a bit more closure on my uni years and associated projects. With no base there any more, I feel able to shift my energy and attention down to Herefordshire (and of course the wedding). I do still have three Sheffield-based projects left to deal with, but am working on that.
Transitional times are scary and sad, but also very exciting, especially when you know something good (your future with someone you love) is on the other side.
Lately, I’m been thinking about objects and how we form attachments to them. For some reason, a connection was made between something I didn’t quite believe in (but found hard to deny) and something I already believed in which is that we interact with everything in the world (and it interacts with us) on a sub-atomic level.
I was thinking about T. and his side of the bed and that touching it made me have a sense of him (which was beyond association and memory) even though it was just a bed. However, if someone has had contact with any object, they’ve “interacted with it” and left an energy imprint. A long time ago, T. was told some things by a psychic who touched his driver’s license and I never could see how psychics knew things by touching objects (though everything she said fit our future in an eerily correct fashion – particularly that he would connect with someone from the eastern part of the U.S. even though he was from California). If indeed we leave a signature on objects, this makes sense.
It also explains why it’s harder to let go of items someone else gave us (especially if they made them), even if they have no practical value. I think it’s a little more than sentiment in some cases. It also adds another dimension to why a culture based on casual use and discard is “wrong” on so many levels.
orchid64, thanks for your comment.
I feel there’s definitely something in that idea of our interacting with objects on a sub-atomic level. Parting with objects really makes you look into what things mean to you. I’ve had to use a lot of rationality to deal with sorting my stuff into categories, rationality that helps me part with things that inside feel like they’re a part of me.
There’s one object in particular that keeps on coming back to (I gave it to Oxfam) – a handmade oversize Moroccan dice. I feel it was very much a part of me.
But I’m reassured if I think of a beautiful wooden owl I once made. It was about 8 inches in height. painstakingly carved from a solid block of wind-felled cherry in Switzerland. I put a lot of feeling into that owl – it was a gift from my partner whom I’d recently split up with. It was an apology, a peace offering.
She sent it back to me by return of post.
I was a little hurt at the time, but then realised that that is what that owl had been made for – to take a message, and then return to me.
I’m not sure where or when, but I gave it away. But the owl is still very much a part of me. It helped shape a part of my life, and its physical absence doesn’t seem to affect its meaning or connection with it.
Maybe the handmade dice will stay with me too.
Some items are too difficult for me to hand over to strangers, and thus are being transferred to family members to do with as they wish. They might give them to charity shops, but that will be ok. I will have passed them on to someone who was a part of me.
hmm.