Where Did It All Go?

I used to have stuff. Used to have it in a 10×10, just like you. I got tired of having “stuff.” I got tired of paying thousands annually for a place to keep it all.

My “trophies” weren’t plastic sports figurines mounted on wooden, or marble scraps, and made in China. Mine were elaborately framed university & college degrees, gilded pedigrees of academic acumen, intellectual achievement, military honors, various “attaboys” and awards for outstanding achievements of myriad kind.

Thousands of pounds of dog-eared books gathered dust, spiderwebs, and had all become silverfish breeding grounds… if they survived the summer’s unrelenting heat. Their yellowing pages’ content had been absorbed by my mind like a sponge – formulae, formularies, codes, rules, regulations, history, poetry, music, anatomy, physiology, research – all retained like a steel-jawed trap in the Yukon.

Centipedes, brown recluse spiders, and an occasional housefly had taken up residence, and evidence of their presence were mere exoskeletons twisting in the tangle of their disheveled webs, while others permanently reclined about the floor in the midst of the historical menagerie of my mind.

Imported and handcrafted leather garments, custom made couture, suits, Italian silk ties, all accompanied by dozens of American hand-made shoes each $400-500 a pair all laced, placed, and hung placidly flaccid, drooping the steel conduit and chain which served as their makeshift rack.

Backpacks, tents, camping and hiking equipment with well-worn and muddied hiking boots were muted evidence of treks to inner and outer limits, exploratory observations and wilderness environs.

Cameras and photographic equipment, musical instruments, electronic gizmos, cords, connectors, batteries… were all lying silently in repose as if in attendance at a mass funeral.

I wondered who died.

Turning around, I reached up for the cord, pulled down the door, closed the latch, and walked away.

A man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.