I have junk therefore I am

Sometimes it is hard to let go. My darling is often after me to get rid of junk. Junk that I know is of no real use but it is mine. Some bit of software from 1989 that just might come in handy, to bad I haven’t got a machine that will run 5 ¼ “ floppies. Marbles that I won or bought or traded when I was 10! Lecture notes from university (and the text books). All this stuff and more. Stuff that is of little real value.

Boxes of paper backs that I might one day read (and I still can’t find my copy of I Robot). Mind you, my son is an avid reader; he might like them sometime in the next 10 or 20 years. Books and books. Well I am not so bad with them now. I tend to recycle them through the second hand book shop but I still keep the ones I loved. I even parted with my collection of Scientific Americans (hmm, that title is starting to sound like an oxymoron).

I have a pile of tools, 12 different sorts of hammers, a bunch of measuring and levelling instruments, dozens of screwdrivers. Actually I will stop there, tools are different. It is handy being able to use the right tool for a job and there aren’t too many that don’t get used over the course of the years. Ditto for my CDs.

And there is a whole ensemble of other things that don’t fit into regular categories that don’t get touched from year to year.

The thing is I like my stuff. Each item contains some memory. Some bit of me. My history. When it is time to do a clean out I often pick an object and reflect on the time and place it belongs then put it back. Sometimes I can get ruthless but that is rare (or I have lost the connection with the item). I guess when I am dead and gone most of it will just be junk but while I am alive it is part me. Mine I tell you!

I must admit that I have some of my fathers junk. Seemingly useless things. Thing that shared an experience with him and me. I know they are inanimate but they are more that what they are. The photographs I have of him don’t hold the same quality; the ability to bring me back to a place and time in his living years. A time when he was my father.

My junk is precious, but only to me.