In which there’s a pretty thing.

I’ve had this thing on my wishlist for pushing a decade. It’s a fairly close replica of the one my great grandmother had, which now belongs to my uncle. Ten years is a long time to covet something that costs less than forty bucks, and I finally just went ahead and bought it.

It arrived today and it’s wonderful and pretty, and I’m so grateful that I can just buy something like this and have it show up on the steps a week later. But it’s not a $40 meal to be digested and forgotten about, it’s another box to keep in the storage space and to have to carry the next time we move and I basically always feel guilt about accumulating things because I know at some point in the future I’ll be moving it or donating it or throwing it away or somehow trying to get rid of it, to deal with it, so I can take myself and the few things I really need someplace else because that’s how it’s always been for me.

I’ve owned entire sets of furniture that are gone now. Record album collections, dishes, waterbeds and sideboards: all gone. A table my maternal grandfather made: gone. An heirloom ring, a handmade doll, 99% of the books I’ve ever owned: gone. Leather coats, good winter boots, cast iron pans and whisks and 6×8″ woven rugs and a samovar and high school annuals and pictures in frames.

Once in a dorm building in Albuquerque I just threw shit into the incinerator shaft because I couldn’t get rid of it any other way. Good shit. But I couldn’t keep it and I didn’t have the resources to sell it or donate it. Once in a farmhouse in Iowa I had to walk away from things I wanted because they were ruined or wouldn’t fit into the Jeep. Once in an apartment in Portland, I abandoned a baby grand piano because I couldn’t afford to move it and I couldn’t find anyone to donate it to.

Everything ends up being a burden. Everything ends up being a burden. Everything ends up being a burden.

But before it does, it’s frequently beautiful and brings joy.