Getting Rid Of Things

Now that I'm nearly fifty, I have to accommodate myself to the plain fact that I have reached that age when people start to die. When you're forty, you can tell yourself that, with luck, you're still in the first half of your life. But once you're fifty, all you can do is shrug. And as for death, whether it's the well-earned wages of your sin or just some caprice, banal or tragic, of the reaper of souls, still there it is, what's called a fact.

It would be nice if, whenever my death occurs, there isn't a great tangle of possessions for some poor survivor to dispose of. Disposing of the belongings of a dead relation is one of the silently heroic tasks of a human life. And I should say right from the start that among my things (a dusty clutter) are the things of my dead lover. I can hardly bear to throw them out, not simply for the obvious reason, but because I just have trouble getting rid of things in general. In my whole life I've only sold a handful of items second hand, I just can't cope with it. All my cars went to the breaker, because in the first place of course they were always at or near death's door, but also because I couldn't cope with the social stress of selling them.

There is therefore this conglomeration of the objects of two lives, and since I'm still alive, it still gets added-to. But I want to make a start, now, at trying to reduce it all to nothing. I want to reach the point of no possessions just before I die, with perfect timing, so the only thing left to dispose of is my corpse, my entire material existence blown away like sand, leaving the world more or less as I would like to find it.

Having no idea when I will die, it will be hard to time this dwindling of my property to coincide exactly with my death. I might live another fifty years, and if I do, I dare say I'll own nothing of what I have now, just as now, I have nothing I had as a child.

But the first step is to cut this heap down to size, trim and prune it like a bush, get rid of the dead-wood, the easy stuff. Having got rid of car and television long ago, these great millstones of a modern human life no longer trouble me. Those were easy to get rid of really. Owning a car, one's life can all too easily become a series of crises, keeping the damn thing legal and on the road. It's no big deal, at one of these crises, to say: "stuff this for a game of soldiers", and just get rid of it, always some sucker that wants a car. And a TV is, a bit harder I admit. It's quite easy just to drift on, renew the license year after year. I was a bit lucky, the set broke down at the same time the license ran out. Seemed like a sign from fate. I slung it in the bin and forgot it. Oh I was a bit itchy for a few days. Then I started to realise I was sleeping better, waking more rested, feeling less depressed. As they say, I haven't looked back.

Nowadays I escape into reality. It's very peaceful really, there's almost nobody else there anymore.