Friday, February 5, 2010

memory or money

The pianist and I are getting decrepit but not demented. We have "stuff" to unload eventually, whose value is memory, not monetary. Whose memory? Mostly ours. That is the trouble with "stuff". Our stuff becomes a legend in my own mind chiefly because it is a reminder of the events of our life ,ever present icons of the fragments of our existence. "How", someone might say, "can you worship your stuff as you do? You must be some sort of materialist, placing an inordinate value on 'things', rather than proper Christian principals." When we acquired the prized possession of old so-and-so, our relative, in the olden days, we wondered why she made such a fuss of this "thing"! Now I know. Most of the stuff the pianist and I will leave has little monetary value but it is difficult for me to part with it since it contains so many memories. Yet, it will have little value for others. In the mobile society we have today, and the disposable culture we have fostered, there is not an abundance of genuine heirlooms with intrinsic value that are one's own heritage. Sure, if you have enough money you can buy someone else's heirloom, but so what? It comes without your genes attached. I don't want to burden our children with the icons of my memory. I say "fuggedaboudit!" As I have recorded before and bears repeating, (paraphrased) "Don't be like as ass, whose back with heavy ingots bowed,you carry them but a journey, 'till death unloads you." Easier said than avoided!

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