I am a secret hoarder. You can be a secret hoarder when you have a big house with lots of closets and a garage. Your friends will think you are one of the tidiest and most organized people they know. They are wrong.
You cannot be a secret hoarder when you live in a condo, and you share a big underground garage with 500 other people where only cars, not stuff, are allowed. You cannot be a secret hoarder when your only storage area is a 4x8 cage. Still, my 4x8 cage is a tower of wonders--bins stacked on bins stacked on shelves, the walls lined with s-hooks hanging all the things I want to someday need but might not ever need.
I prepared for the great downsizing. I gave things away. I had an auction. I gave more things away. I sold things to friends. I sold probably half my furniture to the new owners of my big house. I gave still more things away. But still, I have dozens of pens. Dozens of markers, and document clips, and paper clips, and pencils, and rubber bands, and envelopes. And hundreds of post-its and boxes of staples. I have journals and more journals, both empty and full. I have index cards, and journals made of tear-out index cards. I have books and more books. I have so many books that I cried yesterday when I tried to fit them on my fabulous wall unit after it got installed. There wasn't enough room even though I made more space in my bedroom and in my closet. So, weeping while I worked, I boxed up four boxes of books to give away. And I lived.
Long live e-books. Long live my book-sized iPad mini. Long live the written word. Long live poetry, and novels, and memoir. Long live essay collections, and story collections, and anthologies and books about birds and whales. Long live books written by dear friends, and writers I'll never meet. Long live all those words that have mended all the broken places, filled the empty places, and emptied out the places full of sorrow and bitterness. Dear writers of those words, thank you.
