Me and Fibber McGee

The other day Bruce said he was tired of living in a warehouse. I replied that I would love to live in a warehouse; warehouses are huge. Right now we are living in a closet.
                                               
It’s true that our house is small, but that is not the problem. The problem is all the stuff in it. After all, there are plenty of families larger than ours living in single trailers. And then there’s the “tiny house” movement, where people live in places that are only 100 square feet total. Actually, when I first met Bruce, he was living in just such a tiny house, aka a vacation cabin that had been converted to year-round rental use, long before tiny houses became fashionable. I don’t think the place was much more than 100 square feet, certainly no more than 150. And yet it was homey and neat, and he had somehow managed to shelve and hang everything he owned so that the place felt plenty big enough (until I tried to take a shower and kept banging my elbows on the walls). Ironically, now we live in a place about 10 times the size of that cabin, and it feels tiny and crowded.

Why? Well, from where I sit, I see an expensive doll that’s been played with about five times in two years, a bottle of Rit dye with a little left in it that “might come in handy”, two shelves of cookbooks of which we generally use three or four and never crack the others, and a manila envelope decorated by my sister, which used to house some photographs she sent. There are antiques and quasi-antiques thrown up on walls and mantles (most not really arranged, just put). In a corner is a brown pottery crock containing a rarely used metal detector, an old-fashioned rolling mouse stick toy, a yard stick, a couple of wooden “swords”, a “bow” made of a bent stick and string, with a pipe insulation “arrow”, a stick horse, a baton, a feather duster, a watercolored fabric flag on a stick, a long cat toy that’s like a feather duster, a small broom, two walking sticks, a dowel, and a random piece of one-by-one wood. This is just one crock in one corner of the house. Almost every corner looks like this, and not just the corners. The cabinet under the TV is stuffed with blankets and quilts, as is the hall closet. We wouldn’t even need this many blankets if our house became a Red Cross shelter in the next ice storm! (We should get rid of some, yet how do we pick which ones? They are all cozy, and many were gifts; two were Cedar’s bed comforters as she’s grown up, and how can we throw that part of her childhood away?)

Looking into the kitchen, I can see a teddy bear in a pirate kerchief next to my daughter’s placemat on the table. This table gets cleared off periodically, but within 24 hours is always re-covered with newspapers, mail, papers brought home from school, wallets, keys, pocket change, to-do lists, and, obviously, stuffed animals and other toys. Two of the five chairs are generally un-sat-upon in our family of three. They are layered with sweaters, coats, hats, snow pants (yes, already!), and bags. The stairs going up to our bedroom are no better. They hold the newspaper box; brushes, combs, and potions for Cedar’s wild hair; tissues; books to be returned to the library; the pumpkins we painted for Halloween; anything needing to go upstairs; and all the papers we’ve taken off the table to make room for eating.

I have just described maybe 10 percent of the stuff I can see from where I’m sitting in the living room. Just think of the bedrooms; the bathrooms overflowing with magazines (the New Yorker comes every week!), towels, gifts of soap and bath salts (not to mention the litter box and all its accoutrements); and the back office in which we can barely turn around, let alone stand up, because above us is a loft full of, guess what, more STUFF!

We have gotten rid of many things, but still we are drowning in them. Over the past couple of years we have given boxes and boxes of books to the library sale, and recently we threw away crates of old music cassettes and video tapes. These were emotional partings. Those tapes had held the music of our teens and twenties, as well as mixes lovingly made for us by friends. And it’s not that we don’t still own a cassette player, because we do, but we never play tapes anymore, so it was logical to toss them. Unfortunately, logic and emotion don’t mix well. It’s been months since the tapes went to the dump and just last night Bruce was still lamenting their loss.

It’s amazing that we did let go of the tapes. Normally around here, emotion wins. I have never been able to bring myself to throw away my sister’s envelope because she spent so much time decorating it with magic marker shapes. And then there is all my daughter’s art. I have trouble even tossing coloring book pages that took no creativity whatsoever, let alone her actual artwork. And then there are the toys. Even she (a serious pack rat) is finally starting to feel weighed down by the amount of stuff she has, so she proposed getting rid of a children’s Sudoku game. She never plays it, but it has these beautiful little jewel-like animals to place in the squares. She was willing to let it go, amazingly, but I wasn’t. I love those little animals!

Basically, our house is one loooooong paragraph in the story of our life, full of words and sentences that have just enough meaning to resist being tossed aside, but still overwhelming to both reader and writer alike. Natalie Goldberg, in her wonderful book Writing Down the Bones, says that writers should be samurai, cutting away all the fat from our work. I can generally do that with my writing. After all, words come easily; I can always replace them. But how do I replace the Guess Who game, made for three-year-olds, that Cedar and her friend Reuben used to play for hours every day? It has not come off the shelf in ages, except to afford access to something underneath, and yet if it were gone, I think I would feel the hole in my life forever.

I have a feeling we’ll be in this closet for a long time.

I Want a Smartphone, but I Need a Yacht

I want a smartphone… but I don’t. It’s more like I feel like I need one to continue living in this world. It’s already a communication device; a computer; storage for music, movies, photos, and podcasts; a checkbook; a credit card machine; a locator for self, others, restaurants and constellations – but luckily there are still other ways to perform these functions, so for the moment a smartphone is just a want. Eventually, though, it will be the only way to check out a library book (book!) or to travel; it will be our social security card; passport; driver’s license; certificate of birth, marriage, divorce, and/or death. Then, of course, it will be a need.

Wants vs. needs is at the heart of the question of what is enough. I never took a psychology class (though growing up with two psychologists should entitle me to at least a bachelor’s degree in the field!), but I do know about Maslow’s hierarchy. At the bottom are the physiological needs – food, water, air, excretion, etc., which, when unfulfilled, supposedly make it impossible to do anything more in life than just try to survive. A smartphone isn’t necessary for any of those, but the right app could help locate a food or water source or a public bathroom. Still, when the future comes, and it is impossible to buy anything without a smartphone, I will still easily (well, maybe with some difficulty) be able to stay right on our land and live off our garden in the summer and off deer and pine needles in the winter without any electronic devices. And I will be able to use my own bathroom facilities, or the woods, as needed.

The second level of needs Maslow lists is safety. Here a smartphone could be an asset or a liability. It is good to be able to call for help when in trouble (to actually place a call, unlike the two girls trapped in an Australian sewer who simply updated their Facebook status), but I can use my dumbphone for that just as easily. On the other hand, my dumbphone doesn’t have GPS, so it should not lead the NSA to me, which may, in the end, keep me safer. Not that I have anything to hide, of course, but given the amount of “collateral damage” our military operations always generate, I’d rather err on the side of caution.

So score one point for the smartphone on physiological needs and zero on safety. The higher levels of need Maslow describes are social connection, esteem, and self-actualization. We need to feel useful, to feel like we belong, to be valued by ourselves and others, and to feel like we are working to our potential. The traditional way to feel like we belong is to be part of a tribe. We wear tattoos, dress a certain way, or root for a certain team in order to show our affiliation. (My husband’s San Francisco Giants hat is an icon of his tribe. Often someone will recognize the sign and speak to him as one of the group. Here in the East, his tribe is not large, but apparently it is sufficient.)

This tribal iconography must be why my community college students, many of whom fail classes because they “can’t afford” the textbook, almost all have smartphones. I’m not sure how they prioritize a $200 phone and $100/month service over their degree, but I guess it’s that important to be part of their peer group, the student tribe. And speaking of peer groups, in an article I’ve previously mentioned from the Atlantic, the multimillionaires interviewed almost all felt like they needed more money to have enough. Why? Because absolute wealth doesn’t matter, only relative wealth within one’s group. If you don’t have as nice a yacht as the guy next door, then you clearly need to trade up. Otherwise you’ll lose your spot in the good yacht tribe. And then where will you be?

Personally, I tend to think of needs as only those things at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy: food, water, air, shelter, love (maybe). There are people in refugee camps living in tents. There are homeless in cardboard boxes on sidewalks, poor kids in tin hovels between buildings in Brazil. They live. They make it from day to day somehow. They definitely do not have what most Americans would consider to be enough to meet their needs, but do they? Researchers have found that in many people the needs for belonging, esteem and self-actualization are prime motivators even when physiological and safety needs are not completely met. Sometimes it’s more important to belong than to eat.

So is more than enough to simply ensure physical survival a want or a need? If it is a want, then my desire for a smartphone is as exorbitantly ridiculous as the rich guy’s desire for a better yacht. But if cultural affiliation and belonging are truly needs, that sometimes even trump the basics, then the smartphone is becoming more and more necessary as more and more people get them and my tribe of holdouts grows ever smaller.

The Icing on the Cake

One night, after a dinner that left me almost stuffed, after a quarter of a mango, a frozen banana, and a few grapes, I casually went to the kitchen for one pretzel rod. It was crunchy and salty and had that perfect burnt-ish smooth pretzel skin under the salt. I ate it and continued reading my email.

 

Then I went back to the kitchen and got another pretzel. It was just as good as the first. I ate it slowly, biting a piece off gently and chewing it carefully, softening the inside with saliva, then crunching the outside. I went back for another one. By this time there was not even the slightest thought of hunger, but still I was pulled back to the bucket to take another. Finally I just stood at the counter in the kitchen and ate two more, not even bothering to pretend I was going anywhere.

 

There’s a saying in Alcoholics Anonymous, “One drink is too much, and a thousand is not enough.” After five pretzel rods, on top of everything I had eaten earlier, I could feel chewed-up starch piled right up to my breastbone. My esophagus was literally full. If I had eaten another pretzel, it would not have had anywhere to go; it would have just sat in my throat. But I still would have eaten another. And another, and another – if something hadn’t called me to my senses and sent me off to bed.

 

The next morning I still felt that stuffedness, all the way up my chest to the back of my throat. I felt a distaste for pretzels, yet I knew that later, if I allowed myself to have one, I would do the exact same thing and maybe not stop at five.

 

When I was around 14, every day after school I would bike half a mile down the hill to the Grand Union and buy a can of vanilla frosting. As I pedaled hard up the hill on the way home, I would imagine I was actually burning off the calories of what I was about to do, earning the right to eat that can of frosting. Which I would do, either in front of the TV or reading a book, completely encasing myself in numb pleasure, my brain sated with entertainment and my mouth sated with creamy sweetness. I was alone in a delicious cocoon…

 

…until I started feeling sick, which was usually when there were only a few spoonfuls left in the can. At that point I would throw the can away, vowing never to buy another one. And then I’d eat a pickle or something “real” to counteract the greasy sweetness of what was in my stomach (which was essentially sweetened Crisco). The next morning, however, I would pick the can out of the trash and finish it. For the rest of the day I’d want more and couldn’t wait until I could bike back down the hill for more frosting.

 

With certain foods, and to some extent with all food, for me “enough” has no inherent meaning. For years I’ve struggled to give it a meaning, but then there are nights like the one with the pretzels when all meaning is gone. The only enough I know then is that there are not enough pretzels in the world.

 

For me, that is a figurative dearth, but for so many people there is literally not enough food to keep them alive and healthy. People are starving, and I have so much food I have to practically tie myself down to keep myself from eating too much of it. A thousand calories is the bare minimum for a woman to survive on per day, but that 2000-calorie can of frosting was extra for me, on top of all the healthy food I ate. How can it be that people not having enough to eat can exist in the same world where I could buy 2000 calories for a dollar-fifty or whatever it was back then? How is it that the thought of these people is not enough to keep me from going back for one more pretzel?

 

 

Riding the Giraffe

I wish I were more like John Muir. This guy used to grab a blanket and some hardtack and take off across the desert or up a mountain or down into a canyon. He never feared not having enough. “’Oftentimes,’ he writes in some unpublished biographical notes, ‘I had to sleep out without blankets and also without supper or breakfast. But usually I had no great difficulty in finding a loaf of bread in the widely scattered clearings of the farmers. With one of these big backwoods loaves I was able to wander many a long, wild mile, free as the winds in the glorious forests and bogs, gathering plants and feeding on God’s abounding, inexhaustible spiritual beauty bread.’

“On these expeditions he had disciplined himself to endure hardship, for his notebooks disclose the fact that he often went hungry and slept in the woods, or on the open prairies, with no cover except the clothes he wore,” writes William Frederic Badé in the introduction to Muir’s A Thousand-mile Walk to the Gulf.

In one of his most famous essays, “Snow-Storm on Mount Shasta”, Muir describes the night he and a fellow naturalist spent in blasting snow, huddled over volcanic vents that spewed intense heat and foul gases from the side of the mountain. It was such a cold night that they had to continually turn their bodies so that one side could be boiled by the steam from the fumaroles, the other side freezing. While his companion was wishing he had a minister to pray with and dwelling on their certain imminent death, Muir was optimistic: “With a view to cheering myself as well as him, I pictured the morning breaking all cloudless and sunful, assuring him that no storm ever lasted continuously from day to day at this season of the year.”

Muir was fearless; during a strong windstorm, instead of taking refuge indoors, he climbed to the top of a hundred-foot Douglas spruce and whooshed back and forth wildly, perfectly happy. The last thing he was thinking of was food or where he would sleep that night. Meanwhile, I go into a panic attack if I’m not sure when my next meal is coming.

When I camp, I have a huge pack, a tent, a sleeping bag and pad, food, cooking gear, bug spray, sunscreen, a towel, a bathing suit, water… I can imagine setting off with just a blanket and some biscuits, but I also imagine myself shivering, hungry, and miserable. I have never even fasted for an entire day. I often can barely make it from breakfast to lunch without a snack.

The closest I’ve ever been to Muir’s self-sufficiency was when I was three years old. In the big house where we lived was a room that I think was supposed to be a dining room, but it didn’t have a table in it, or at least for a while it didn’t. All it had was a large circular braided rug. At the time, one of my favorite toys was a Playskool riding giraffe. It was a little scooter, with handles on each side of the giraffe’s head. I remember packing a lunch and a blanket and riding my giraffe from the outside edge of the rug around and around the spiral to the center. I had my supplies, and when I got to the center I would eat my lunch and lie down on the blanket. Eventually I’d pack up and ride back out to the edge.

When I think about those “trips”, I remember how satisfied I felt that I could pack what I needed and take it with me. I didn’t need much, and I had my giraffe to take me where I wanted to go. Many years later, when I started to read John Muir’s writings, I was brought back to that feeling. To this day I would love to be so free, so unneeding of anything beyond the very simplest provisions.