I Want More (to be gotten gone)

Dealing with the accumulated too much muchness of our life

We are moving. Across the hall. Our new front door is less than eight feet from our current front door, and our new digs are the exact same square feet and configuration in mirror image. Why, then, you might ask, go to the trouble of relocating? Good and reasonable question.

When we moved into this place it was rather a rush situation, emotionally fraught, and with our consent, and to the financial and energy-saving benefit of the landlord, the carpet wasn’t cleaned (or replaced), the walls weren’t painted, and in the years we’ve been here, this apartment, like us, has suffered decremental functional and physical changes. The refrigerator door hasn’t had a handle for three years, and the butter compartment door broke off, the produce drawer doesn’t so much slide open, but rather, requires a heft and a heave, the result of which is more often than not one having to chase rolling produce across the kitchen floor; too, the freezer doesn’t just freeze food, it invades packaging no matter how strong and airtight, and frost-burns the groceries two pensioners can barely afford as it is. Immediately. Too, the two left-side burners on the gas range-top require a lighter to get them going. And the oven is disdainful of temperature settings, freethinking to the point of renegade-ism and so baking or roasting is an exercise in being constantly on the qui vive for signs of combustion and/or smoky miasma — which, by the way, even the tiniest hint of sets off the ridiculously sensitive fire-alarm, which is located illogically in a hallway off the kitchen leading to the bathroom and bedrooms, which narrow tunnel sucks the smoke and heat, funneling it right to the any-second-now screaming smoke detector. Just try baking Christmas cookies with all that going on. Then there are the cabinets, early 1970’s faux-wood brown, decades of grease having given them a patina not unlike that found on the grill in a diner plagued by health code violations. And that’s just the kitchen. I won’t go on about the sliding closet-doors that don’t, and the clear plastic bathtub handles which have bleach-proof (I’ve tried) black mildew/mold on the inside, and the slatted-Venetian shades on every window that once must have been white but are now a sort of camouflage pattern of fingerprints and mildew-dots impossible to clean, or the horizontal-blinds between the panes of glass on the patio-doors (patio meaning the six by ten cement slab on the other side) that won’t go all the way up nor all the way down and fall at interesting angles no matter what one does.

So, that. All of that. Across the hall is the promised land. New carpet. Fresh paint. Wainscoting. Bright, white new kitchen cabinets. Appliances with handles and a range top that (we hope) doesn’t require lighters and an oven and freezer, neither of which burns food. New shades. Best of all, the direction in which we will be facing means much more light in the apartment and — even better — no longer will the view from my bedroom window be the entrance gate to Fort Detrick — you know, the chemical weapon warfare development and storage center of the U.S.Army where anthrax is stored and it’s rumored the HIV-virus was developed? — with its patrolling soldiers and their huge weapons — and that’s not a wink-wink euphemism.

And while it’s only eight feet, it’s still a move. Packing is required.

And there’s just too much.

I am currently squeezed into a tiny space at my desk, walled in by ten boxes of books — and those were just the books stacked on and around my desk. And I’ve another (at least) two boxes left to crate up in just this six foot square space. AND I boxed up two cartons going to Goodwill and another two which are being shipped to a book re-seller who’ll be crediting my account with their worth. Although, not anywhere near what I paid for them. Some of them I’m getting eight and nine cents for. It is staggering to me — and I’m not going to think about it beyond typing this sentence — the tens of thousands of dollars I have spent on books; Just the books BY MY DESK I’ve yet to pack cost somewhere in the range of eight hundred to a thousand dollars.

And, I hope you’re seated … I have QUITE LITER(ARI)LLY HUNDREDS more in my closet. All are TBR. (That’s TO BE READ, for those of you not obsessed with book buying.) And there are 40 more stacked and waiting on (and under and beside) the two tables by my bed. And we haven’t even started talking about the 6 bookshelves and the media credenza in the living room. Or the stash my sister has in her room.

Hard cold fact: at the rate I read (about 10 books a month, usually) and taking into account I check out between four to ten books a month from the library, and buy conservatively five to ten (okay sometimes WAAAAYYYY more) books a month, it would take me — well, wait, I’ll never catch up. Let’s pretend I decided (and stuck to the decision — not gonna happen) that I’d never buy or borrow another book, it would STILL take me somewhere in the neighborhood of ten years to finish just what I own and haven’t yet read.

I don’t think I’ll live another ten years, honestly, and so … damnit. This post started off being about all the excess in my life which has come to my attention as we get ready to move across the hall.

Now, it’s about, I’M NOT GOING TO GET TO READ ALL THE BOOKS I WANT TO BEFORE I DIE!

But, here’s the thing: having them near me, living in these towers of books, it brings me great joy. So, it’s okay. I am content to spend the rest of my life reading. I have a comfortable chair and good lighting and I spend hours a day there. It’s enough. And the older I get, the less of anything else I need, and the more I resent the hours I can’t be reading.

So, getting ready for this move, now, with an ever increasing realization that my time is limited and my greatest, simplest joys are reading and the people I love, allows me to purge in that Swedish Death Cleaning sort of way. This past week I have gotten rid of about two thirds of the clothes I had, and about half the dishes. I’ve been foisting off family heirlooms on nieces and nephews. I’m ruthlessly purging. I go at every pile and drawer and category beginning with the assumption “everything is going” and I keep only those things that are essential to getting through a day. Or, the thought of throwing them away makes me experience shortness of breath or tears.

None of this applies to books. And, there are just some things which — although they are no longer of real use — are too invested with life-story for me to part with them. For example:

That’s one of my two souvenir T-shirts from the Broadway musical, LESTAT. This is the one in better shape. The armpits are blown out of both. The collar and hems of the sleeves and bottom of the shirt are unraveled, there are coffee and bleach stains, and the shirts are stretched all out of shape. They are 18 years old. The musical was — admittedly — awful. But ….

My aunt, whom I adored, had kept a secret life insurance policy naming me as beneficiary. As she became less herself, less able to leave her room, she made me promise her that I would not wait too long — as she had — to stay at the Algonquin and go to New York City every year for my birthday. See musicals. Eat alone at Schrafft’s (well, too late for that, but I didn’t tell her). And so when she died, and that unexpected money came to me, I determined to use it to keep my promise.

2006 was the first birthday I spent in New York. And at the Algonquin (before Marriott bought it and ruined it) and on my birthday I saw LESTAT. I bought the T-shirts BEFORE the show. And while it was horrifyingly bad, Carolee Carmello was in it and she is never not worth seeing and listening to. And there was one good song, I WANT MORE — sung by the spawn of Lestat and Louis, Claudia, and I recommend you YouTube it. I mean, with a lyric like:

Did I rock the family boat by dining on the help
Aren't I just the little beast, well I can't stop myself
I want more, I want more, I want more
I want more, I want more

I WANT MORE on YouTube

And then there is Carolee singing as mother to son, Take me and Make me as you are. One of the most uncomfortable, cringiest moments I’ve ever seen in musical theatre.

MAKE ME AS YOU ARE on YouTube

But, the T-shirt isn’t about the show, it’s about what it cost me to get there; my aunt died, and I had to pay a huge price to be able to make the trip on my own, and didn’t — even then — learn the lesson that having to apologize for and beg for time alone ought to have taught me. That took another five years of almost daily praying I would not wake the next day.

So, I’m keeping the shirts. When I die — which I hope happens when I’ve nodded off in my recliner while reading — there will be piles of books, and, I’m sorry whichever niece or great-nephew ends up cleaning out whatever space I’m in — there will still be boxes and boxes of my journals and letters and finished and unfinished novels — and, no matter how many years from now it happens, there will still be these Lestat shirts.

I’m purging. But, some things have pieces of my heart attached. And those, I cannot let go.