Mary Beth Maziarz

The Things We Keep

Well, after a bizarrely heavy freak snowstorm earlier this week (in MAY, for goodness sake!), it’s again feeling like spring around here.  The good garage sales have started appearing, migrating animals with their new babies are  navigating the forest nearby, and “May Mom” — in contrast with September Mom — has arrived, packing lunches that are less like Bento boxes and more like half a Pringles can and a packet of Fruit Snacks from 2017).  

In our neighborhood, we have this thing called “Dumpster Days,” where several large dumpsters are placed in nearby parking lot for everyone to use to clear out junk and yard waste (there’s also a CHIPPER!) to keep things looking shipshape and reduce fire danger.  There’s been an unspoken tradition that people leave unneeded items that are still perfectly good on the ground in the areas around the dumpsters; this creates a fantastic scavenging ground for things that you might be interested in trying but aren’t sure if you’d like to actually invest in…for instance, a veggie spiralizer!  An aromatherapy steamer!  A camping espresso pot!  It’s awesome…just clean it up and it’s yours!  Fun, cost-free, and keeping things out of the landfills…and we are there for it.  

My family LOVES dumpster days, both for the opportunity to let go of unneeded items that have been taking up space, as well as for the above-mentioned opportunism, but also there’s a fascinating bit of neighborhood anthropology that can be gleaned from rummaging through the refuse of your neighbors’ homes, as it turns out.  

Is there a preponderance of toys, kids books, ping pong tables, old video game consoles?  The kids are growing up, folks. Boxes of books and old DVDs?  The way we seek info and entertainment media is changing, and we’re probably not going back.  Perfectly functional expensive smart coffeemakers and intelligent vacuums? Some still in the boxes??  Your grandparents are just fine with the old standbys, everybody — they don’t see the point in talking to their appliances or getting an app in order to clean the kitchen floor.  

Yes…we are defined by the items we use, the things we choose to keep around us, the stuff we can’t let go of and the stuff we throw away.  

I recently did a deep clean on my office — something that had been lonnnnng overdue.  Over the last few years, it had become my communication center, recording studio, craft vault (for the grown up art supplies), alteration station, meditation space, library, and storage unit.  This one modest room was not meant to be all these things concurrently, and so some decisions needed to be made. 

I had to ask myself (and keep asking, over and over) things like:  Where am I actually spending my efforts these days?  Am I really going to _________?   Do I even care about ______ anymore?  Did I ever?  In the title words of a brilliant story by Joyce Carol Oates, I had to repeatedly ask myself:  “Where are you going, Where have you been?”

This kind of questioning process, I should add, is the most difficult thing in the world for me.  I stalwartly believe in everything being possible, in the abundance of time, energy, and opportunity for the right project, in the truly limitless nature of our lives.  I’m also creative and resourceful, and believe that most problems can be solved, many items can be reused and reimagined, and spectacular last-minute costumes can be created from things around the house as needed.  In addition, both my husband and I descend from immigrant parents and grandparents whose frugality and waste-not-want-not values surely load our epigenetic genomes with a resistance to shedding anything of possible eventual value.  Because of all these reasons and more, I struggle really hard with letting things go.  

Every item feels like a challenge for my busy brain to evaluate its future possible usefulness.  Note that I’m fairly unconcerned with it’s present and past utility — that was then, this is someday.  History means nothing in the debate raging with me!  You never know what might come up!

Every time I place things like art supplies, games, kits, or appliances into a donation box, I feel a pang of personal failure or regret.  Oh…I was going to do portraits with those….we were going to play more card games with the kids…we never did make that mosaic stepping stone from Christmas 2009…why did I not sous vide more chicken?  Why?  WHY?!

And clothes?  Well, they just swirl around in psychological scylla and charybdis of body image, career shifts, identity, aspirations, nostalgia, and experimentation.  And they have to make it past the painting clothes box before being considered in the “is it too crappy to even donate?” dilemma.  So time and again, with the change of seasons, I churn through my clothes (many of which, I kid you not, have been in my wardrobe for 20 years+…I try for timeless) in efforts to magically and artfully tidy up and simplify my life and embrace a capsule wardrobe — I do! — but it’s slow going.  

Creative projects are the hardest though.  Lyrics from unfinished songs that still feel potent and interesting, outlines for novels or plays, sketches for inventions that I’d like to explore sometime, stray poems that never quite fit into a collection of any sort. . . little creative tendrils, still seeking a place to land and grow and become what they’re meant to become.  How can you let those go?  And how do you know what’s worth picking up again?  Does THIS fit in with our one wild and precious life??

~~~~~~~~~

The only thing that seems to hold true as — again and again — I find myself thrashing against constriction as I consider these decisions, is to listen for THE PULL.  Am I being drawn toward this item, this project, this piece right now?  Am I excited to have found it and remembered it and to put it into use again?  Does it make me feel a rumble of possibility and lightness, of energy and recognition?  If so, great!  Consider how it fits into your priorities and parameters, and find an orderly way to keep track of it.  

Or do you feel a push — a sense of  wanting to push it away from you energetically, noting a sense of avoidance, or obligation, of dread, of disappointment or regret, of heavy effort, of failure?   If so . . . it’s time has passed.  You can let it go.  It’s holding you down and holding you back, instead of lifting you up and sending you forward.  Marie Kondo’s "Spark Joy” requirement works for our creative efforts too.  

William Morris said: “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”  The things you conjure up in your creative efforts can absolutely be useful and beautiful, or stepping stones on the way to being so.  Or they might have served their purpose, past snowflakes of possibility that have now melted and are nourishing the flow of our current creative streams.  Energy has no end, it merely changes form.  Think of your creative efforts that way too…they're never wasted, they just might come around in different forms.

Wait  for the light, the spark, the desire, the PULL.  If you don’t feel it, do your best to let this little bit of yourself go.  Trust that  there is always more inspiration, more connection, more to express and share and shape.  And if you do feel that activation, value it.  Give the project the love it needs, the attention and energy and care and discipline.  Give it priority and place in your life, and make it what it wants  to be.  And then, move on to the next thing that lifts you, excites you, fulfills you, pulls you, and let each milestone bring you confidence and momentum. 

When you find the things you know you want to keep, hold them close to your heart, where they are filled with its pulse and charge.  You are the steward of these brilliant possibilities, so be bold!  Clear what is finished so that you can see what is finally, thrillingly,  ready to start. 

And start.