The 30th leg of the Camino.
For three years I wore only black. Black pants, black t-shirts, black dresses, black socks, black shoes. It made my busy mornings easy. Most days at work I am literally rolling on the floor, so it was also practical.
The funny thing is – I don’t think anyone noticed.
Yeah, I don’t know if that is funny. At any rate, I woke up one day two summers ago and wanted a pair of harem pants. I craved colors and patterns. I craved playfulness. Now my closet is overflowing again.
I have moved so many times in my life that I have stripped down to the essentials over and over. And I have lost essentials, too. Noting the loss matters, though. I continually mourn for these things – not forgotten in the back of a drawer – but physically gone.
Don’t lost things take on a significance they could not otherwise obtain?
I read that Kondo book until I got to the sentence where she said if you do come to need something that you are thinking to throw out now, you can always buy a new one later.
No.
That is not that philosophy I am looking for.
I’m coming to understand that simplicity for me doesn’t mean fashionable minimalism. It doesn’t mean living in a tiny home, cute as they are, with those custom furniture pieces. There seems something extravagant to me about selling my home and finding an affordable plot of land on which to put a tiny house – a location that would allow me access to legal sewage, public transportation and within walking distance to a grocery. That kind of simple is a lot of work. And a kind of privilege. And maybe for single people who don’t have 80 pound hounds.
Maybe for me simplicity is about embracing the routine; about finding the familiar strange and interesting; about finding perspectives – and nudging the edges instead of stripping to the essentials. About wanting what I have.
There is a simple joy in ornamentation. A simple pleasure in in a room full of books.
I’ll be sorting through my closet this week. I’m not going to ask myself what sparks joy, but what causes me distress. I’ll pack those things into cardboard boxes. The local charities are overrun with secondhand fast-fashion right now. So I will stick the boxes in the attic. And if after a year or so, I have not missed them, I’ll try to find a simple solution for my excess – one that doesn’t make someone else my sin-eater.
Nothing is simple. But I will keep working on it:
I have a yard. I’m planting a garden.
Something tells me that whole endeavor will be a kind of complex simplicity, too.
