For years I've been wanting to de-clutter. I feel guilty having accumulated so many things but at the time having them gives me immense pleasure, especially when it comes to books. I GOOGLEd for a cluttered library and came up with the above.
For twenty years my clutter was in my head rather than in my hands, as I moved restlessly from place to place with no more than a suitcase. Now the clutter is all too visible. It's everywhere. It's in the books that line the walls and are stacked on tables and which are a clue of who I was and what I found inside their pages while I read them. It's in the paintings on the walls and the stuff on shelves that remind me of some-thing or somewhere or someone. I am my things and my things are me.
It seems that humans have a fundamental need to store memories, values and experiences in objects. Possessing such objects gives them a sense of stability, a sense of self. I think, even if I lived in a beach hut, I would soon pick up interesting bits of driftwood and start a collection.
Consider for a moment people who enter the military or a religious order or are put in prison. They have their personal possessions re-moved to eliminate their uniqueness because possessions define us.
I've just been outside to take a snap of my own library. No, I don't have one of those fancy cameras with a fish-eye lens, so all you can see is one side, the less-cluttered one. Spot the difference!
