STUFF

++Yes, George Carlin Stuff, Stuff that needs to be moved, Stuff that needs to be stored--Just Stuff.

++If you have lived in a single place ,in the same house, for twenty years, you have accumulated a lot of stuff--good stuff,bad stuff, stuff that should be thrown away, but Stuff nonetheless.

++You even have virtual stuff--Washington Post and Los Angeles Times subscriptions, the Dish and Washington Monthly subscriptions,Amazon Prime,and the New York Times but you like the Times in its printed shape.

++I have so much stuff I have a storage unit that could fit two Hummers in it--the Raiders of the Lost Ark version--where the Ark sits hidden among my boxes. It is so large I actually pay Sunday visits there to visit MY STUFF. Stuff accumulated during my entire adult life. Photos from my celebrity wall at my old office,computers including my old Mac with floppy discs from New Jersey,hard drives from even older computers. I even have a Sinclair, which was one of the first laptops who had a screen that showed one line at a time. I have at least four laptops that were used in countries all over the world.

++When my father died, I had to get rid of his stuff. He had every receipt for everything he ever purchased in his life and diaries that recorded every cent he spent--even the 5 cents for the Daily News. He kept every pill jar for every prescription he and my mother even took. He kept every gift box ever received--in case he ever needed one. He kept all gift wrapping--which stored in the attic was an amazing fire hazard.

++I once suggested to my sister we donate it all to Rutgers for an art exhibit of the typical suburban family's STUFF. It was amazing record of someone who grew up in The Great Depression--not to be confused with the Bush Depression.

++But as they say the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree. In my storage unit are all the receipts for my taxes since the late 1980s. I have finally winnowed these down to the five years I need to keep. But here there were finds. I found the bill for the treatment for amoebic dysentery by the Shah of Iran's doctor on the upper East Side of Manhattan. Drumroll--total bill was $75.00. This was when Blue Cross-Blue Shield was a  non-profit. 

++I have all the papers from the various organizations I have run in the past twenty years and the records of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights. I also have hand-scribbled notes from the overseas travel. I have the entire Iran-Contra investigation hearings, the Grenada papers,key court transcripts of these tried for killing Maurice Bishop in Grenada. I have all books about Richard Nixon dating back to Bruce Mazlich's psychological profile. I have the hearings of the Andrew Johnson impeachment. 

++But this gets us to books. I have sold 1,000 books from my house. It felt like selling my children into slavery. But I still have 1,000 left. Now let's go to the storage unit. There are 450 boxes of books--just my personal reading--nothing professional. Let's call it 9,000 books. These don't count the 5,000 lost when my storage unit in New Jersey was sold and the new owners did not contact me and I lost everything.

++I have birthday cards to Joseph Stalin sent by the Communist Parties around the world, which I snagged  in Moscow during the period of Boris Yeltsin. I have the hearings of the Dewey Commission on Leon Trotsky as well as the transcripts of the show trials under Stalin.

++I have Voodoo flags,Suriname hand-carved chairs,African masks,and Canes which double as swords. In fact my storage unit is cooler than my house in decor.

++But it is all just stuff. The book market collapsed about 2006 and I have heard the woes from local book sellers and buyers about how my autographed first-editions are no longer worth much. For a time, pre-publication copies were the hot item and I have hundreds but no longer.

++I once said if I won the lottery I would buy a first edition of "The Whale" which last I looked went for $35,000. Today, I wouldn't . Why? No one in my family would want it. I already have a fine Moby Dick. 

++There is nothing my son would want from all my stuff. The only thing I kept from my father's STUFF was the only book he ever bought in my lifetime--Catcher in the Rye. The irony is that it isn't a first edition but it's cover is the original. A book buyer suggested i buy a cheap first edition and put my father's dust jacket on it.

++My wife would just as soon trash everything. And we have done that a lot. Have you ever seen a shredder--shred a computer? It is amazing. The result is like metallic graffiti. Just ribbons of metal.

++The storage unit costs per month the equivalent of a modest Home Equity loan. 

++But you have to consider who's going to get rid of your stuff when you are gone? Do you want to make some family member spend months going through your Stuff for memories? I think that is grossly unfair. It's not like I'm Morris Louis leaving thousands of paintings behind that have never been seen or shown. And even that isn't sorted out in 2014,almost a generation after he died.

++I treat the Stuff as a false guarantee I will not lose my memory and that physical things will trigger whole episodes in my life and experience. And it is hard getting rid of Stuff.