hi!
hmmm, thoughts for the month, i guess this is….
getting ready to go back to oz, again. this time will be a little different. i’ve decided to pack up my apartment and shift my focus from visiting there and being here, to being there and visiting here (there being melb, here being l.a.). well, actually, i’ll be kind of homeless, which i am kind of looking forward to.
i have had a priceless therapy session with myself and all my worldly belongings…….not just without fixed cost, it was free.
as soon as i hit the lax tarmac and walked through my front door. i sat for two weeks in solitary confinement, cooking healthy (yes folks, i am cooking!), detoxifying meals, sleeping for many more hours a night than i have in quite some time, and arising to face one of my closets everyday to wrestle with my inner packrat.
namely one closet. it holds all the things i’ve had in storage since i ever moved here and before i shipped them here, they sat in various drawers and cupboards in whichever home i occupied in melbourne, (the home my stuff occupied, more accurately) while i was on tour for 8 or 9 years. before that, they held some meaning.
i have ‘things’ that i have been carting around with me for a good 20-25 years. (yes, i was a junior packrat before i graduated magna cum laude) i refound barbie, pictures of all my teen heros and heroines (some still stand, but i can’t say i still vibe with marky mark), ALL my old diaries! (cringe) and lots of memorabilia from the birth of frente to the last days of splendid.
time is of the essence before i box as little as possible, trash the rest and fly to melb, still i couldn’t help but sit and at least eye every single receipt, letter, piece of press that i came across, when i wasn’t avidly reading them.
i could take you for the same walk i took in a majorly condensed fashion, but i guess what i would most like to share is what i received from reading all these birthday cards, report cards from both primary and high school, cards from the few places i was actually employed, finding photos that reflect jumbled timeframes in my life, and touching my fingers to trinkets, toys and ornaments that took me back instantly to a sense of that particular era in time that they came from.
i’m glad i accumulated so much stuff and waited so long to review it as a body of work. it was like attending your own funeral! i mean who hasn’t, at one time or another, wished they could do that? that undiluted moment, when everyone gets together to offer a tender ‘this was your life’ to your post-humous self.
my impression of myself, was that i was a geeky, unco-ordinated, ugly, underconfident, insecure, shy, pre and post-teen (don’t even want to talk about my impressions of the inbetween teen part!).
i thought i was invisible.
but i was most definitely seen, and not in the way i saw myself.
i had drawn such a convincing picture of my memory of myself over the years, that i was positive it was fact.
how healing to blow that picture after all this time. i didn’t even know it was there, until the perspective of the many wonderful people who have come into my life and/or i into theirs, came together in my closet in one big ballsy compassionate, unbiased roast, called, ‘This Is Your Life Angie Hart!’
i can’t say everyone was full of praise, because they weren’t. i was a typical questioning, growing being, with an appetite for the answer, resulting in a few (okay, maybe more than a few……okay! maybe a lot of) unconscious acts of cruelty. this also gave me the pleasure of absolving myself once and for all of the guilt i had been hoarding (packrat) about my behaviour that i can’t take back or change. that was, without a doubt, the most valuable thing i took away with me from the journey i took cross-legged on my hallway floor.
in this new chapter of my life, i have been ruthless (hartless, you might say). i kept very little of all this proof of my existence here on earth. it has given me the gift that i have been trying to squeeze out of inanimate objects on the retail therapy trail for years. it gave me a consistant story of who i am and how i matter in this world. i don’t need to keep these things to be reminded. they will resonate from here on out.
p.s. do not try this experiment until you are good and ready. it requires a healthy back-up stash of self-love (carefully cultivated over years of trial and error) and a massive dose of non-attachment (did i throw out that holly hobby pincushion?………………………… no, really?……………..has the garbage truck come yet?……………um, i’m just going out for a bit, i think we need some….milk? HEY WAIT! NO, JUST LEAVE THAT BIN RIGHT WHERE IT IS, IT’S REALLY DIRTY, I’LL TAKE IT TO THE LANDFILL MYSELF, DON’T YOU WORRY ABOUT IT! HEY! NO! OH!…………holly? is that you?)