03 June 2015

Tomorrow the very skilled man is coming to paint the walls downstairs, some of them. It would make sense to have all of them repainted but we are finicky and stingy and who cares anyway.
It coincides nicely with the heatwave followed by thunder storms with heavy rain predicted for the next couple of days.

This morning I cleaned away various flora and fauna behind the shelves and sofas and where the pictures were on the walls and of course behind my great grandmother's sideboard. The spiders etc. all ran like hell and I hope they found homes elsewhere by now. The ants, I'm afraid, didn't make it. I could have rolled the dust bunnies into a large ball and spin it into gold but the hoover gobbled it all up.

Next week, after R will have perfectly reassembled the shelving, my task will be to put what feels like thousands of books back into some order. I am very tempted to chuck out most of them. I know, I know, books are holy and so on, but some are not so holy anymore and it's time to start clearing spaces, unloading my baggage so to speak.

Last night I foolishly started to calculate our meagre pensions and once again stared into the dark tunnel of poverty. Which is really quite arrogant because we will find a way to make ends meet, surely. And now my mind just brought me back 35 years when we were clearing out the attic room in Heidelberg. We had lived in this tiny room with its very crooked walls for almost a year while I was trying to figure out what to do with my university career and R was getting restless. In the end and for lack of options and cash, we decided to free ourselves from the shackles of careers and academia and start a new idealistic life in Ireland - or something like that, it was a long time ago, we were young and foolish then.

As a start, we decided to give away most of our earthly possessions - because hardly anybody wanted to pay money for it. The rule was: keep 20 books, 10 records, one bicycle and one rucksack with clothing and essentials per person. To this day, I still regret the 10 records rule and miss my Joan Armatrading and Cat Stevens collection and the fabulous Joni Mitchell live set, oh, and John McLaughlin's "Electric Dreams".

So we'll see what will happen to the books next week.



2 comments:

Ms. Moon said...

Just last night I told myself to take ONE small thing/area and clear it out each day.
Will I? I am holding on to that which has no meaning.
Humans are hoarders, most of us. It's all just a degree of relativity.
And maybe that is all right.

nan said...

remarkable musical piece. I thought it was Jaco Pastorius at first. That is some beautiful bass playing.