Wednesday
Julia and I have inherited my parents’ house, and while we are thrilled, we are also discovering that it is no small feat to clean out the detritus of 74 years—not to mention all the stuff that my parents inherited from their parents and grandparents. We’re trying to be careful—you never know when you’ll open an envelope and find a letter from Pete Seeger, which we just did—but it can feel overwhelming at times.
I think of Thoreau, who at one point in his Walden sojourn found himself overwhelmed by three pieces of limestone. The episode occurs in a reflection on people always wanting bigger houses and more stuff.
The passage starts with longing for the simple life of the uneducated Arab or Indian. (Anthropologists tell us that their life is far from simple but let that pass.)
Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less? Shall the respectable citizen thus gravely teach, by precept and example, the necessity of the young man’s providing a certain number of superfluous glow-shoes, and umbrellas, and empty guest chambers for empty guests, before he dies? Why should not our furniture be as simple as the Arab’s or the Indian’s?
And then there’s the fact that the great prophets—Jesus, for example—did not carry furniture around with them:
When I think of the benefactors of the race, whom we have apotheosized as messengers from heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man, I do not see in my mind any retinue at their heels, any carload of fashionable furniture…At present our houses are cluttered and defiled with it, and a good housewife would sweep out the greater part into the dust hole, and not leave her morning’s work undone.
At this point we learn of Thoreau’s dislike of dusting:
Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be man’s morning work in this world? I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and I threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground.
Alan Dillingham, my American lit teacher in grad school, pointed out that Thoreau has another option: he could just leave the rocks dusty. Dillingham was making the point that Thoreau was obsessed with purity, starting with Walden Pond itself. So yes, anyone living in the woods needs to get over a dirt phobia.
But set that discussion aside. Right now, I’m relating to Thoreau’s desire for an uncluttered life. Before I get there, however, there are mounds and mounds of stuff standing in my way.