Hoarder?

The walls are gradually closing in on me, inching nearer day after day. I notice it when I bump inadvertently into that new bookshelf that is placed too close to the right hand turn past the hallway, or have to maneuver around the dining room table and its pile of magazines and newspapers to get into the kitchen. It is utterly apparent when I look into my closets, distended with boxes full of keepsakes, ancient paperwork from my past, photographs, obsolete computer components, unused fishing tackle and sporting goods. My walls are so crammed with paintings, pictures, posters and prints that I imagine how I will rearrange them when the time comes to add yet another. Dust piles up on the numerous flat surfaces as the enclosure becomes ever more tomblike with mostly meaningless belongings.

Yet I still go to the thrift stores and stop at every garage sale I pass, unable to resist the siren’s song of bargain priced possessions. In the middle of my work day I find myself browsing ebay, often purchasing expensive objects to add to my many “collections.” The menagerie continues to grow, and the larger it gets the more things it requires so that I may rediscover some surreal plain of satisfaction.

Sometimes I fantasize about selling or throwing away half of it, but in my heart I know only the most desperate necessity would bring me to this solution. Now I’m considering moving in to a two bedroom apartment, even though I live alone, so that I may coexist comfortably with my beloved chattel.

In his novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, author Phillip K. Dick calls it “kipple,” this useless trash that surrounds us and grows greater and more powerful as time goes on. And I consciously realize that it’s mostly useless, meaningless and unimportant in the extreme. I tell myself that almost every day. But I’m not going to part with any of it. And it’s a certainty the mass will continue to grow. I think I will move in to that new apartment, after all.