Possessions

What we trade for our things

On the day after Thanksgiving I bought too many things online, knowing I was moving into a new apartment in a month and I don’t even have pots and pans. To find the best deals, I sifted through all the websites yelling HERE ARE THE BEST BLACK FRIDAY DEALS and filled up many carts on many websites.

I talked myself into and out of getting a Kitchen-Aid stand mixer, a Staub coccote (like the one I sold before I moved here), a nice dinnerware set. I filled baskets with nice things and then closed websites, only to reopen them again, my basket still there, waiting for me.

Let’s be clear: I have no money. Not real money. I am tenuously sustained by my PhD fellowship and stipend, plus some loans. I am still paying off medical bills for my back surgery six months ago. I have a car payment. My rent is going up, and moving, even in town, is expensive.

Yet I filled basket after basket after basket. My email inbox itself was a kind of basket, being filled with Black Friday offerings promising me the best sleep of my life, increased immune function, a pristine home, an ageless face and body.

Thankfully, I didn’t end up buying a lot. I want a matching dinnerware set (something I’ve never had as an adult, except for what I inherited from my mom and gave away), so I bought one for $20. I used a past credit to buy face wash and some overpriced creams. I bought an inexpensive pots and pan set. A cheap automatic coffee maker so it can make coffee before I wake up. A computer monitor, so I can stop killing my eyes with my tiny laptop.

The only extravagance I allowed myself was a 2023 planner from a stationery shop I love, and a fancy (but not expensive) notebook.

But I was distracted by it. And the sales, the rhetoric and garish copy and graphic design orbiting around them; it all took something from me.

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Lately, I’ve been thinking of things in energetic terms. Don’t get me wrong— I am not woo-woo, though I am not entirely not woo-woo. But I know that I have a finite amount of energy each day, each week, each month, year, lifetime. And I’ve been thinking about what gets that energy.

Those Black Friday sales— all those emails and websites living inside my tiny pocket device, and the pocket device itself (for the most part) are black hole energy suckers.

Whether or not I spent too much; whether or not I took my stand-mixer shopping cart through virtual checkout, I exchanged my energy in contemplating it. Actually, I didn’t exchange my energy. I gave it. Because I got nothing back.

Actually, if I get more clear about it with myself, I was in a fight for my energy with the advertisers and companies who filled my inbox. And that is not a way I want to be in the world.

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For Thanksgiving week, I pet-sat in the “nice part of town,” which is Northwest Tallahassee. It’s up where Maclay Gardens is, where there are an abundance of parks and prep schools. I needed an escape from the small house I share with my roommate, though I had the place to myself. Energetically, it was feeling like too much, so I packed a few bags and drove twenty minutes north, parking in front of the modest three-bedroom house where the pets lived, in the less modest neighborhood.

The evening of the 26th, which was the last night of my pet-sit, I took a long walk around the subdivision. It must have been built in the late eighties, or maybe even late nineties. It’s hard for me to tell nowadays when things were built, because the things I used to think were new are now old.

You get to the subdivision by driving northwest on a two-lane highway lined with oaks and Spanish moss. They call them canopy roads here. We have canopy roads all over Washington state, but we never named them anything. Maybe because they’re so abundant. But here, there’s more development and less canopy roads, so they get special names.

Anyways, the subdivision has a granite placard etched with a name. The houses lining the streets are relatively well-spaced, relatively large in size. It’s not a wealthy subdivision (because the real wealthy people don’t live in subdivisions, right?), but I’d have called it a rich neighborhood when I was younger, back when I thought any house with two levels and a yard was for rich people.

I started my walk at 4:30pm, which gave me a solid hour and a half before last light, according to my sunset app; an hour and a half I wouldn’t have, were I still in Seattle.

Since my back surgery, I’ve been vigilant about my daily walks, almost always making sure I get at least 10,000 steps in, so I’d taken several walks in the neighborhood.

This time, I was restless, and couldn’t settle on anything to listen to. There was no right music, podcast, or audiobook. Eventually, I took my headphones out and put them in my pocket.

Here, there were sidewalks with yellow bumpy plates to help blind people and those with sight issues know when they were approaching a street crossing. There were massive oak trees perched in manicured front yards, their trunks as big as Smart cars. For the first time, I noticed that the Spanish moss, which was mint green in the summer and early fall, had muted itself gray.

As I walked, the sounds of the neighborhood settled in around me. Children screaming in one backyard, and in another yard a child negotiating with a parent. Dull, indiscernible sounds coming from behind closed front and back doors. Chirps of birds and the soothing whisper of breezes through tree branches, which gently tugged the Spanish moss one way, then another.

On a previous walk I’d noticed the large boxes, perched on each block near the sidewalk, painted the same shade of mint green the Spanish moss had once been.

They asserted their presence with an electric hum. I hadn’t noticed the sound during my previous walks, because of my headphones. Dusk settled. They hummed louder. I pictured tubes of cords traveling from the boxes and into the houses they powered— all the appliances and lightbulbs they animated. The televisions and computers that glowed with their light.

The clouds hung low, their thick, cottony undersides painted an opaque white-gray, but the air was languorous; warm and humid. As I walked, daylight leached from the clouds and sunk into the pavement. The street lights, made to look like lanterns and perched lower to the ground than the ones I’m used to, flickered, then switched on, emitting their own particular hum.

On my walk, I’d begun noticing these fake plastic rocks, vaguely shaped like gravestones. Almost all the houses had them. The ones that didn’t revealed their function, which was to cover the well pipes sticking up from the ground. I imagined the owners of each house baring a fake plastic rock navigating to a website where one can buy fake plastic rocks to cover the pipes, thinking, I must hide the well pipes. But I could not imagine why the well pipes needed to be hidden.

Darkness gathered. I checked my phone to see how far away I was from the house. Without daylight, the neighborhood was spooky.

Some houses bore holiday lights like empty grins. The lights sparkled and flashed for no one but me, and I hadn’t asked for them. The metal boxes powered them. Their presence was so dissonant and glaring compared to the rising orchestra of the evening. Insects and birds and squirrels and bats all chattered together, enveloping the neighborhood in a diaphanous blanket of sound.

As I walked, bats swirled and swooped above me, dining on the insects who ventured out at dusk. Their chirps scoped me out. I imagined my outline in their sonar-vision.

No one else was out walking. Without my headphones, I felt so present. I sense the texture of my clothes and the warm, humid air settled in a layer of moisture on my skin. I passed a small, undeveloped spot; a little ravine filled with pine trees, oaks, and other hardwoods, all of them wrapped in yellowing kudzu. The kudzu, like the neighborhood itself, had once been absent from this place.

As I walked, I imagined what the land once was. I imagined all the houses gone, the sidewalks, the streets, the electricity boxes and cars and kudzu— all gone. Before these things were here, the sound of dusk must have been much more powerful. I recalled the jungle in Nepal, which hadn’t been developed, and how loud the nights were with animal and insect chatter. Had it once been like that, here?

I took a right, turning down the street leading to the house I was staying at. The street is named after an animal that people like to hunt and kill. More holiday lights switched on.

I passed a tree where I’d previously seen two hawks perched together at its apex, their heads bowed as if in conversation. Then, crows. The first ones I’d seen since coming to Florida. That was on Thanksgiving, and I immediately thought of my mother, who had loved watching the crows from the window of her Seattle rental house.

My mother had longed for this life. This kind of neighborhood. The big house. The several cars, the boat, the garish Christmas lights. And she had gotten them. All of them. When they revealed their emptiness to her, they revealed her emptiness as well. I imagine the twin emptinesses whispering to each other: one asking to be filled, and the other, with its previous promises of fulfillment, unable to oblige.

All the things she’d strived for and thought would bring her fulfillment— they were lifeless. Void of energy. Yet, she had devoted her life to the prospect of that fulfillment.

I approached the house. Their neighbor had an intense Christmas setup: two conical tree-shaped flashing light fixtures in their yard and a giant inflatable bear that glowed from within. Behind the lights and bear were a couple projectors whirring and dancing. The front of the house was only half-visible beneath the cursive neon MERRY CHRISTMAS, which cast itself along the windows and front door, and the dancing neon snowflakes. A tinny speaker played “All I Want For Christmas.”

I stood in front of the display and noticed that the bears arms were slowly opening and closing, as if giving someone a hug. Except there was no one there. Or, rather, I was there, but I was just watching the bear hug the empty air and reopen his arms. Each time the arms moved, the bear hummed louder, and I could hear a click when the arms opened and closed.

As I stood there, I thought to myself: I didn’t ask for this.

I didn’t sign this contract that says I will exchange my energy for this.

Not for the sad bear and the fake trees and the projector, or the inflatable Santa three houses down with the half-working fan machine that only half-inflates it and runs 24 hours a day.

I wasn’t born into this world to take so much from the earth. We weren’t.

Photo by Dawn McDonald on Unsplash

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I’ve always had this feeling that, if I could give up my life to make the world better, I would.

I saw this in terms of the environment. If I could offer my life so that the earth could be immune to destructive human desires and ignorance, I would. I have felt this for as long as I can remember.

I didn’t think I would be so disturbed on my evening walk, but then again, I don’t spend much time in those kinds of neighborhoods. In cities, people often live so close together, and take up less space, so I’m less bothered by the collective consumption. In my own neighborhood the houses and cars are modest. But the subdivision, in its artifice, exposed something to me, and I am ready to see it for what it is.

This exchange. What we exchange our time and our energy for. What we take from the earth to power our lives. And how we don’t even think about it most of the time, or at all.

As if we’re somehow entitled to it, simply because we’re here.

This way of being is decidedly American, but in the way that many American things have done, it permeates worldwide culture in a toxic way.

Here’s what I know: I don’t want that life. Not any of it.

How can we really be present if we can’t even look at our lives with honesty and ask ourselves how we are changing and shaping the world around us, not only for ourselves but for those who come after us, and those here with us now— those who live in places far-flung and who have a softer impact but suffer the consequences of our greed, and the animals and plant and insect creatures who surround and sustain us?

This is the refrain I hear from so many:

we have no control. It’s the corporations that need to change. Why should I sacrifice my comfort for the greater good when it doesn’t even have an impact?

The question I am asking myself is this one:

What if it’s not about saving the planet, but instead it’s about living in integrity with myself?

What if nothing I do will impact anything at all, but buying into the idea that my happiness resides outside of myself, in material things or superficial ideas, will deeply impact me as a human on this earth?

What if I have enough, right now? How much energy do I give myself by accepting my body, my face, my income, my possessions, for what they are?

My body is my body and I am grateful it is alive and functional. I live in a large body. That is neutral outside of our fatphobic culture. What if I love my body for what it gives me, rather than wishing others would love it for how it appears? What if I take care of my body and move my body in ways I like, and that’s enough?

My skin is my skin; my largest organ. My skin will wrinkle and age, and that is not a value judgement. Aging is neutral outside of our toxic culture. What if I focus on loving my skin, and feeling what it feels?

Nothing I buy will give me real joy.

Nothing I buy will make me whole.

I am asking myself: What’s important to me?

And then: How can I prioritize those things above my cultural training?

In contemplating these things (really, really contemplating them) and making them real in writing, I imagine a life in integrity with my values. That’s what’s most important to me.

To live in integrity inside of our culture requires true vigilance, but not necessarily in a negative sense. Just an awareness of my energy, and where it is going. If I give my energy to something, how does it feel? Am I depleted, or invigorated? Is it an exchange?

Today, I gave my energy to this, and to you. And you gave me your energy by reading this. That feels like a nice exchange.

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Please tell me in the comments how you’re feeling, what you’re struggling with, what you’re excited about, or anything at all. We’re in this together.

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LINKS

• I listened to this wonderful interview on It’s Been A Minute with Jessica DeFino, who writes The Unpublishable. The interview is all about beauty culture and partially about the Kardashians, and it’s excellent. Jessica’s newsletter is an incredible, critical look at the skincare industry.

• I’m currently reading Barbarian Days by William Finnegan, a staff writer for The New Yorker. It’s honestly been a while since I’ve read a piece of literature by a straight white man, but this book, a memoir of Finnegan’s surfing days and a history of surfing, is self-reflective and beautifully written (so far).

• In my last meeting with my editor, she mentioned the notes Octavia Butler used to write to herself. So, I found them, and they are incredible. I’m working on writing some notes like this to myself.

• I noticed that I’ve been less exploratory than usual when it comes to music, and someone pointed out to me that it might be because I am overwhelmed with my first PhD semester. So, during the break I made it a point to explore some new music. I came away loving Weyes Blood’s newest album (I had already loved her, but alas), U.S. Girls’ In a Poem Unlimited, Meitei’s Kofu, Hannah Sun’s Hannah, and Isao Tomita’s Greatest Hits.

• I’m reading The Mushroom at the End of the World for a paper I’m writing, and I really, really love it. Anna Tsing takes a granular look at a mushroom that went from pest to prized delicacy, and she invites her readers to examine their assumptions about how we, as humans and cultures, grant meaning to words, ideas, and the natural world.