edge of the continent

When an opportunity to leave work a little bit early on a rainy Friday afternoon comes my way, I am not one to pass it up. So my weekend started with a showing of Mira Nair’s The Namesake, a beautifully filmed adaptation of a novel by Jhumpa Lahiri (a writer whose work I enjoy). The story of a Bengali family that settles and grows in America, it’s a thoughtful, delicate study of adaptation, culture, and identity. By the time the movie ended, the rain had stopped and the city was bathed in that pretty, almost magical light of the sun just before it slips behind the ocean for the night.

Saturday, I finally got off my duff and took the first of what will likely be several trips to the local DAV to drop off some donations. Mostly clothes, handbags, and a random assortment of household and office items, their departure cleared up a nice-sized space in the hallway (and removed a tripping hazard, a bonus for me). It felt great to let it all go.

One of my favorite ways to spend a Sunday morning is to grab a cup of coffee and take a leisurely stroll through the farmer’s market, where I can sample all manner of fruits and vegetables, admire the beautiful flowers, and smell the great food being prepared by local vendors. Cherimoyas are in season and were a great treat this weekend — they tasted like pineapple fruit candy and were wonderful chilled — and I gave in to my odd cravings for cauliflower, jalapeno cheese bread, and eggs. A few errands and a nap or two later, and my nicely low-key weekend was set.

I’ve been working on paring down the “things” in my life to those that are most meaningful and/or useful to me, from weeding out the CDs I no longer enjoy to letting go of personal commitments that are no longer fulfilling. Periodically, I’ll check my progress in one area or another to see how it is working out, because it’s too easy for me to get something down to a seemingly manageable level — say, the number of magazine subscriptions I have — only to find that: 1) I’ve managed to add to it again without adjusting somewhere else (but it’s so useful! interesting! look at the pretty pretty pictures!), or 2) barring that, what I cut down to is still too much.

I’ll be moving again soon, so this purge-purge-purge imperative has become much more immediately important to me. The thought of moving boxes of stuff that I haven’t touched in three moves or clothes that I haven’t worn in three years is unappealing enough to push me to devote part of my weekends to ruthlessly evaluating the status of every item I own.

So far, this work of separating what I love and use from what I’m only ‘meh’ about and don’t need anymore feels like a combination of a clean sweep and an archaeological dig. I’m continually surprised by the things I’ve held onto: a pocket notebook from junior high that listed my resolutions for 1987 (body issues started early, it would appear — my first resolution was to lose weight); more stationery than I could possibly ever use given our age of email and text messaging; keys to locks that open long-forgotten doors.

Every emptied shelf and upended box is bringing me that much closer to the lighter, freer life I’m looking for. Now if I could get off my duff long enough to move all the resulting boxes and bags of donations out of the apartment and into my car, I might actually begin to look as less-encumbered as I feel.